Rose and Fang
by Charizard Morph
Summary: Rose is pulled into an adventure larger than she ever thought possible. Tyler started a club that has grown into something huge, and deadly. Thomas, the scientist who finished the original blueprints for the Pokémorphs,is trying to rectify his mistakes...
1. Chapter 1

Well, this is my story, first one I ever wrote, and am still writing. I hope you enjoy it, there is actually quite a bit more, i have about ten chapters so far, but i'm going to be uploading them slowly. You can review if you like, but i've rewritten the first four chapters once already, and edited them enough that i have them memorised. So, by all means tell me if something is spelt incorrectly, or if the grammar is iffy, but the first four chapters are off limits to anything but spelling and grammar. Please do not flame this story. It makes you look immature, and makes me wonder why you're so enthused at the idea of destroying it. If you need to release anger in some way, write down everything that's making you mad, print it, then set it on fire. That is all. Thank you for reading, and please make an effort to enjoy.

**I do not own Pokémon. **

**Pokéballs, Charizard, Ash, and all other Pokémon characters and items are copyright of Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures Inc.**

Rose and Fang is rated T for:

Violence, disturbing images, gore, mild cussing, and large amounts of family issues involving abuse and misunderstandings.

WARNING:

The author of this story has a mild case of insanity, morbidness, and the abuse of male characters for reasons she doesn't understand. She should probably be seeing a shrink, but she has never felt comfortable speaking to them.

**Rose and Fang**

_A burning blitz,_

_Something is moving in the darkness,_

_An inferno,_

_The sounds around me, voices? _

_I cannot hear them,_

_I am weak,_

_They stole me,_

_Took me from my home,_

_And now I am dying._

_There is only darkness now,_

_My breath is weak,_

_I cannot feel anymore,_

_There is just me,_

_I am floating,_

_Breath no longer comes,_

_I am darkness,_

_Yet there is fire,_

_A light?_

_I will move towards it,_

_There is nothing else to do._

_I awake,_

_But I am not where I fell,_

_I am healed,_

_The other ones they took are around me,_

_But not all of them,_

_Are we dead?_

_No? Yes?_

_But we are together,_

_We are darkness,_

_We are fire,_

_I am Riz-ar-Rard,_

_I am Rose-and-Fang!_

_I am charizard,_

_And team rocket will pay,_

_For what they have done to my family,_

_I am fire,_

_I am darkness,_

_I will destroy them,_

_And none will stop me!_

_I am strong, _

_And this is my FIGHT!_

_I am human,_

_I am charizard,_

_I am morph,_

_And I will destroy them!_

_I awake,_

_And I shall destroy._

**Chapter one**

**Begin**

Rose awoke to the sound of voices, human. By the sound of them, Rockets. She kept her eyes shut and kept her breathing slow, she thought if she didn't move they wouldn't notice her, she was wrong.

"Hey! I've got a live one!" she heard someone above her say. "Great!" a voice sounded distant. "Let's get out of here, I'm starting to get creeped out with all of these dead bodies laying around."

"Damn, I forgot about my tail, stupid rockets." She thought to herself. Rose stayed still as the rockets dragged her to a truck; to move now would be a fatal mistake, she couldn't tell for sure, but she was pretty sure that they had guns, and she didn't want to chance getting shot, she was strong but not bullet proof. Rose was thrown into a cage; she winced as her back slammed against the bars and the door slammed shut. Then she heard a rumbling sound. "I'm in a truck." She thought to herself. She hadn't ever been in one before, but it was easy enough to come to that conclusion. She'd seen plenty.

Rose opened her eyes, the truck was lit with fire from other Char morphs. There were four char morphs in total, herself, a female Charmander and two male Charmeleon morphs; everyone in the truck was a morph, like there were any normal Pokémon in the village they could've taken anyway.

Apart from the four Char morphs in the truck there were seven others, a male Flygon, who was sitting in the corner, was muttering something unintelligible. Two Dragonite morphs, a male and female, were sitting next to each other, unconscious. There was male Salamance, whose tail was making a quiet thumping sound as it ran back and fourth along the bars of his cage. A female Altaria, who had her head buried in her wing and seemed to be crying. A female scyther, who was entertaining herself by slowly maneuvering the scythes on her arms into different offensive positions. And a male aerodactyl, who, although the same breed of Pokémon, wasn't Roses father. Most of them were bruised and bleeding.

She examined her body for injuries, apart from a few bruises and an ache in her left wing there wasn't anything wrong. Then she took a look at her tail, the flame was small, but still burning hot. She breathed a tounge of fire on it; it felt better, but the tiny flame-thrower hadn't really helped much.

The little Charmander morph, whose cage was a few feet from Roses, easily slid through the bars. Her name was Melanie-Fire-Claw; Rose had usually kept an eye on her when her parents were assigned to guard duty. She walked over to Roses cage and slid through the bars then handed Rose a Sitrus berry. Rose smiled at her, she was trying to be brave, Rose knew that. She'd always wanted to be like the grown-ups, Rose doubted that she'd be so quick to complain about being "to little to do anything" again.

Melanie curled up next to her and fell asleep. Rose took a bite of the berry and soon felt much better; the last time she'd watched Melanie had been two months ago. Rose wondered about Melanies parents, she hoped they were alive.

The truck rumbled to a stop a couple of hours later, the bright light stunned them for a moment as the door opened. Rose blinked as she saw the huge stone building in front of them. Then they were paired up, and handcuffed together.

The two Charmeleon were paired, seeing as they wouldn't be separated. Rose knew them, the twins hadn't been separated once in their entire lives. The Dragonite were paired together, blinking their eyes tiredly as they managed to comprehend what was going on. The Altaria and Scyther were paired, and didn't seem pleased about it. The Scyther morph ran her blades across the side of the truck, making an ear-piercing screech; an obvious threat. The Charmander morph was torn from Rose and paired with the Salamance, he lifted her onto his back, where she clung tightly as he let loose a rumbling growl at the rockets. Rose was paired with the Flygon who had been muttering, he looked at her with a slightly confused look on his face, then shrugged and turned to look at something else.

They were all led into a facility then the pairs were thrown into cells after having the handcuffs removed. A voice came on an intercom "Hello, I trust that you are all _**comfortable **_with your accommodations? Fwahahaha!"

Rose looked at the speaker, with a lost expression on her face, she stretched her wings a little, and her brain slowly gripped the fact that she must have evolved. She blinked her eyes a few times, the cell was dark and completely empty except for the bunk bed and a curtain that blocked off part of the room.

"Well that was odd, they usually just tell the guards to whip us if we do anything they don't like. I guess that the rocket who runs the intercom finally lost it." The Flygon morph turned to Rose. "My name is With the Wind and among the Stars, please just call me Star, I hate it when people have to use an entire breath just to say someones name." Rose looked at him in confusion. "Okay, you can stop staring at me like I'm sewing my wings together."

Rose looked away, thinking that this guy was verging on total nutjob, then turned and looked back at him, "so you've been here before?"

Star laughed, "Yeah, it's easy to escape but it's hard to hide from the rockets, despite what morons they are. This is probably the…. Fourth time I've been here, yeah there's the day count over there, see?" He pointed, there were lines that had been roughly scratched onto the wall showing how many days he'd stayed each time, the longest was a month, that was his first visit. By the third visit he'd escaped within a week. "It's about the thirteenth time I've been captured though. The truck doesn't usually get very far with me."

"So is your goal to escape from this place in three days this time?" she asked sarcastically, his answer wasn't.

"Pretty much, I've actually started figuring out a plan already." He looked over at a spot on the wall and was silent for a minuet. "See those three stones over there, they're loose from the wall. Now see the large hole in the wall where there's a cement slab? That's how I escaped last time. Throwing the brick through the window first didn't help much though, it's a good thing I evolved after jumping through, or I might have bled to death." Said Star, twitching his tail back and forth. "This time I think hitting the guard on the head first is probably a good idea."

Rose spoke up after considering this for a minute. "I doubt that we're going anywhere tonight, too many guards, hitting one would just piss the others off. But I honestly don't want to escape, not today." She said calmly. "I'm going to destroy the rockets, all of them; they deserve to die, after they killed my family, destroyed my home." She growled "stupid assholes, they work on creating us for fifty years then decide to kill us off." Rose took a second to examine what she'd just said and realized that it sounded extremely violent compared to how she usually behaved.

Star decided to look into her eyes; when he'd lived in the dessert one of the wiser Pokémon gave him some advice. "If you ever want to know what someone is feeling just look into their eyes." Rose's eyes were on fire, even though her manner was calm. Star thought about the desert for a moment, but quickly suppressed all the painful memories.

"Well, it might be a little hard to take out a gang with over two thousand members by yourself, and that's just Johto. Do you think you could use some help?" There was nothing else he could do but help, not without turning suicidal at least, he wasn't altogether sure that he was completely sane anyway. What could one more life altering decision do? It was his fault that her family was killed anyway, he had accidentally led the rockets to her home on his last attempt to escape. He figured he owed her.

"Of course I could use help! Let's just hope that we can find enough." Her eyes turned thoughtful for a moment. Star nodded. Having a roommate was going to be much more interesting than sitting by yourself figuring out ways to break out of a gray moldy jail cell. He looked around the familiar room, and realized that, for once, it could actually resemble something close to clean.

Rose climbed to the top bunk and let her tail hang down, "Oh yeah, my name's Rose and Fang, just call me Rose." She yawned. Tomorrow was going to be the worst day in hell she'd ever have, or at least she thought. It seemed pretty likely from the bastards who'd destroyed her home. "Well, at least I can try to return the favor. If it's the last thing I do I'm going to shove this rocket hell back up their butts. Or die trying." she thought as she stretched out on the lumpy mattress and closed her eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

**Day one in rocket camp**

Rose woke up, the stone ceiling was gray, dark, there were no lights, the little light there was came from the dimly lit hallway, and her tail. She sat up and swung her legs off the bed and jumped down from the top bunk, "so this is what it's like in prison," she thought to herself. Rose had heard of prison, one of the few humans who had visited her home had spoken about it, he'd said it was dark and gray, that you couldn't escape very easily. She figured that this was pretty close to the same.

She thought about the very few times any humans at all had even seen part of the village.

Rose remembered one time a lady named Joy had come when her father had been hurt in a windstorm. It was odd, her mother had told her to never go past the village border, but that day she had, and she'd brought the pink dressed human to help. That was when she had only been a Charmander morph. "One of the odd things about Pokémorphs, we grow like humans _**and**_ evolve like Pokémon." She mumbled to herself. Her mother then told her that if she ever needed help all she had to do was find a town and go to the building with the red roof. Rose wished that she could find help now.

She resumed her thoughts on the other humans she had seen, she remembered once when a trainer with a Dragonair accidentally stumbled on the village, her home had never really had a proper name they just called it the village. That was the first time she had actually seen a normal Dragonair, this was when she was a Charmeleon morph, and her best friend had been Dragonair morph. The trainer had asked if he could stay and rest for a while, despite the scared look on his face.

Rose had run and gotten Gumar of spoons, the leader of the village, an Alakazam morph. He had told the trainer he could stay for two days. When the trainer was leaving he had challenged Rose to a battle, other morphs had been challenged to competitions like these, usually by wild Pokémon. Rose had accepted. The young man had sent out his Dragonair, but it refused to fight, she remembered the Pokémons hateful words "I will not fight a being that was not intended by Mews creation." The Pokémon stated "you are neither charmeleon nor human, you are unwelcome to fit in either world." with that the snake-like dragon returned to its pokeball. The trainer apologized then continued on, embarrassed on what her friends had translated for him.

This was when she had realized that they were not like anyone else, realized why the trainer had been afraid, outside of her home she was a freak, people like her didn't exist in the outside world. "The last time any humans came they killed and destroyed, I evolved into a Charizard then, I flew to one of the air ships, I killed the Fearow that the rocket sent out, then I destroyed the ship." That was the last thing she remembered before she had fainted from the stress of the battle and the evolution. She sat down on the floor and watched the flame on her tail for a couple of minutes.

Star rolled over and opened his eyes "welcome to your first real day in hell" he said. "Soon they'll come and throw some new clothes at us, oh well, that is the only thing to look forward to, a fresh change of clothes, oh yeah if you value your hearing cover your ears!"

A high pitched bell rang a couple seconds later, then a voice came on the intercom, "That was the wake up bell, rockets if anyone is still asleep, whip them." It said tiredly. "And don't forget to do your morning exercises." It said with a little more enthusiasm. "Today should be full of light and joy!" They both just stared at the speaker as if it were reason these deranged sentences were floating through the base.

The rockets walked along corridors, one entered their room and, even though he was up, whipped Star. He screamed, a sound that shouldn't come out of anyones mouth. "That one was for escaping last time." said the rocket spitefully.

Rose started building up fire for a flame-thrower, "don't!!" yelled Star. Rose shut her mouth with a snap and flinched as the rocket slashed the whip across his back two more times. This time he was prepared and had his jaw clenched shut. The human threw two outfits into the room and left.

Two pairs of jeans cut for tails, then a black shirt, and a dark blue shirt blue shirt. The shirts had two long holes on each of their backs. Rose ran over to Star. "Are you okay!!?"

Star unclenched his teeth. "Don't worry, I heal fast, she would've whipped you too if she'd seen that" he said. Rose watched as the places where the whip had broken through his skin seemingly disappeared. Star groaned and stood up, then grabbed a pair of jeans. He threw a pair to Rose "Don't worry, they're fire-proof." he stated as she glanced at her tail.

She looked around the room, noticing a curtained area in the back she walked over after grabbing a shirt and changed. "What do we do now?" asked Rose as she walked out from behind the curtain, dressed in the black shirt.

"Well, next they'll probably take us to the fight room, It's not really pleasant even though there is more room in there than in here." Said Star with a bitter tone in his voice.

Rose continued to ask questions until an hour or so later a voice came in on the intercom, "The doors to your cells have been opened, do not try to run, or you will be killed on sight. Get into a double file line and be prepared to fight." It said joyfully, as if nothing was better than making someone walk down a hallway. "And don't forget your toothbrushes and soap!"

"Yep." Muttered Star. "The intercom idiot has finally lost it, I hope they find a replacement before he starts singing off camp activities and plays a bugle to wake us up." He laughed quietly to himself. "Although it would certainly add some interest to this dump."

The morphs were led to a large room that was sectioned into 15 cells; the walls were made of seven-inch-thick Plexiglass. They were each led into separate cells and faced against a rocket. "Alright, the name of this game is win your battle and _eat_ or loose your battle and _die_." Said the intercom voice with excitement. "Don't forget to play nice and fallow the rules!!" It sang. Now the entire base was either staring at a speaker, mouths hanging slightly open, or laughing it's head off.

Each rocket sent out a Pokémon, the one Rose faced was an Aerodactyl, she remembered watching her father, who had been an Aerodactyl morph, get attacked. A shiver ran down her spine, hatred for the rockets coursed through her at the memory of what they'd done. The rocket she faced was the same one who'd whipped Star; this was going to be fun.

The Aerodactyl was obedient as its master called the first attack "Use wing attack!" this was easily dodged, she quickly shot a flame-thrower at the Pokémon, YES! It hit leaving the airborne Pokémons underbelly scorched, but still flying. Rose took a deep breath and shot up into the air, her large wings carrying her easily as if she were lighter than a feather. She marveled at this new ability for a second.

"Aerodactyl try to knock it out of the air!" The prehistoric Pokémon shot towards her, Rose dodged then charged in and, with fire in her mouth head-butted the Pokémon in the stomach leaving two puncture wounds where her horns had been. Then as the Pokémon began to land she shot a flame-thrower that pounded it against the wall.

"I'm an it, now am I?" She growled.

The Aerodactyl fainted as the rocket recalled it, out of the air, to it's poke ball. "Stupid worthless never should have…" the rocket muttered, frustration and hate lacing each word.

"WHAT did you just say?" snarled Rose, her sharp ears picking up the hateful mutterings.

The rocket yelled out, "I just said that this was a worthless stupid Pokémon, what're you gonna do about it?" she seemed smug as she folded her arms, turning her back on Rose as she moved to open the door.

Rose flew straight at the rocket and pinned her to the wall, "_Maybe_ the Pokémon isn't worthless, maybe the person who is suppose to be training it is, ever think of that, _**rocket**_?" She growled in her ear, thinking strongly about chewing a hole in the head it was connected to.

Rose dropped her to the floor and walked off, she sat somewhere near the center of the large plexiglass cell, the rocket glared at Rose, wishing her eyes could burn her. She opened the door and stumbled on her way out. Rose smiled at this. The idiot was too mad to even consider using her other Pokemon.

A nervous young man ran in set something on the floor and ran out, he looked as if all he'd done that day was be thoroughly frightened out of his wits. Rose walked over to the item, it was a plate, on it was a piece of some sort of fish, a banana sat next to it. Rose looked up and spotted Star, he looked at her then at the food and nodded, he was already eating his, but it wasn't the same stuff. It looked like they were the first ones to finish their battles.

Rose took a bite of the fish and wrinkled her nose, it was cooked, not just cooked but burnt too. Rose ate it anyway, she hadn't realized how hungry she was until the first bite sent stabs of pain through her stomach.

Rose doubted that she would get much more to eat. At home she was able to go days without eating, but that was on a sufficient amount of food. With rations like these she would have to eat every day, even though the food tasted terrible. "At least I get to eat" she growled to herself.

Rose observed the other battles going on, there were some morphs that hadn't been in the truck. She noticed a Blaziken morph who'd just used double kick to send a Jolteon flying, a Gabite morph who'd just taken out an Exploud by using her Dragon claw, and a Lucario morph that was fighting an Arboks Wrap with his metal claw were some of the ones she could see.

She could also see the two Charmeleon morphs who'd been in the truck, they were in the same plexiglass cell together. Rose decided to watch the double battle, it was Zeek and Zuno fire tail. She remembered the twins; they were always causing trouble and joking around in the village. They'd always been up to some sort of trouble; digging holes for people to trip in, making faces at Gumar during important meetings, skipping class so they could pelt the hunters with nuts growing on the trees, etc.

The fight raged on, but about 10 minuets later Zeek was knocked out just as the Sealeo Zuno was fighting was knocked out. The Crawdaunt Zeek had been fighting was about to kill him, Zuno ran in and slashed it in the underbelly, killing it instantly as his claws broke it's shell and dug into the soft internal organs.

A dark purplish red color, seeping out of the dead Pokémons shell, spread over the field. The rocket sent out an Octillery. Rose sat horrified as the red orange Pokémon smashed it's head against Zeek's bloody body; as the small flame on his tail suddenly flared up white and disappeared.

She stared as the rockets dragged the remaining Charmeleon morph, screaming and slashing wildly, out of the fight area. Rose was growing steadily angrier, the heat radiating off her began to fog up the room, then a bell rang, "you are to line up and walk back to your designated cells" said the voice.

The intercom was going to say something more about making sure to respect trees, but Rose used a flame-thrower on it. She stood up and walked to the door, a few rockets stared at the disintegrated speaker in disbelief as she walked out.

She and Star were led back to their small jail cell, "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!!?" yelled Star, his eyes practically popping out of his head.

"I'm not sure, I saw that Charmeleon morph killed and I freaked." Said Rose calmly, even though there was still a fire of deep resentment and hatred in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have yelled." Star apologized, "But I don't think destroying a speaker was the best of plans. Not to mention assaulting that rocket." He half laughed.

"I hate them all, I should've killed that rocket that I was faced against, you know it was the same one that whipped you?" Rose started heating up again, the fire burning to the front of her eyes.

"Woah now take a deep breath and cool down, oh and I'm glad you didn't kill her, she's an admin, she has direct contact to Giovanni, killing her would've gotten you a worse fate than death, probably." Said Star, his eyes seemed to light up at the thought of killing an admin.

"Who's Giovanni?" asked Rose, using her curiosity to calm down and shove her hatred back.

"He runs team rocket, you get rid of him, and the admins, you have instant rocket chaos." Star smiled at the thought. "I wonder how the rockets would react if we suddenly started acting nuts?" he said, half to himself.

Rose shook her head. "I have no idea, but we might as well have some fun while we're here." She said, with playful sparks dancing in her eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter 3_

_**Day 2 in rocket camp **_

Star woke up, stretching as he stood up from the bottom bunk as well as avoiding Roses tail, the flames on it dancing from the movement of air. She was still asleep, her deep breathing and slight twitching making it obvious.

He walked to the small area in the cell that was curtained off, he pulled the curtain and closed off the small space. And relived himself in something that could only be described as a chamber pot. He rolled his eyes as he zipped up his jeans. "Apparently we're not only in camp, it's taking place in a medieval castle." He laughed to himself quietly; then, looking around at the dark gray stones he frowned, "in the dungeon." He muttered.

Star looked at Rose, hating to wake her up, but getting her up before that damned bell was more important, watching her get whipped wasn't at the top of his 'hey, lets do this!' list. He gently shook her shoulder, "Hey, wake up" Rose sat up and blinked. "You remember the plan?" he asked.

"Yeah, today ought to be fun, well, as fun as it can get in hell." Rose smiled bitterly, then blinked a few times, eliminating the sleep from her eyes.

She jumped down and sat on the bottom bunk. "Hey, Star, you've been here lots of times right, how come they've put you in the same cell every time, you'd think that they'd put you in a different cell, to make it harder to escape?"

Star laughed, it was anything but joyful. "That's a good question, I suppose they always put me in the same cell so they can figure out how to make it harder for me to escape, problem is, I escape before they can figure out how to keep me in." Star laughed again, the sound was bitter and full of resentment, as if each escape had been worth nothing.

"Ya know, pretty much my whole life has been trying to figure out how to escape from the rockets, for about twelve years. I was captured when I was seven, I used to live in the Sinnoh, with a clan of Trapinch and other dessert morphs. I escaped after a month, I pretty much dug my way out, any rockets who tried to follow got pulled down to some room, because of my arena trap ability when I was a Trapinch morph." He scuffed the floor with his foot, making the dust jump up, he spoke again as it settled back to the floor. "They redid this whole room and now it has several plates of reinforced steel and iron in the floor and walls. The only way out was that window I smashed, I doubt they've reinforced that spot." He paused for a minute then continued his story.

"We're about three stories up, So when I busted through the floor into some weird office I scared to crap out of all those Rockets, I think they were really only hired to do paperwork. They scrambled and made a mess while I just ran down the stairs and out the door. And none of them were smart enough to grab me or anything, I don't think I've seen anything stupider since."

"So I ran out the door and escaped to a nearby cave, I lived there for four years, and none of them even bothered looking for me within a ten mile radius of the base. I dug deeper and enlarged the cave so there was a huge maze of tunnels, it was amazing, the original entrance was small but deeper in there was this huge chamber. It was all lit up from Chinchou with water flowing..." he trailed off, remembering something with a fondness, like an old best friend. He stopped for another minute, but quickly started up again.

"Pretty much all I ate was berries and some nuts that could be found near the cave entrances I'd dug. Every now and then a wild Pokémon would battle me, most of them said that I was a freak and refused to fight though." Explained Star, staring at the space where the window use to be, as if he could see the sun through the cement.

"That happened to me once too!" said Rose quickly "it was a trainer Pokémon" she murmured sadly.

"Well I'd suppose that it's happened to a lot of morphs, but there's not much we can really do about it." Star shook his head quickly as if to clear it.

"Anyway, about four years after I'd escaped for the first time the rockets found and captured me again, but before they could get me back to the base I'd chewed through the bars of the cage and dug a hole in the bottom of the truck." He laughed, the sound of it surprised Rose, it wasn't bitter or angry, it sounded like he was enjoying himself!

"They were able to find me easier after that, Giovanni actually sent level 3 grunts, the highest level a grunt can be before they become an admin, out to find me the first time. I guess he thinks I'm really important or something because he's been keeping close tabs on me, or at least as close as he can get."

"After that I decided that it would be better to stay on the move. I dug into a clothing store and stole pants long enough to hide my feet, a sweatshirt with a hood, a pair of gloves, and a backpack. Two days later I was in a pokécenter and a news bulletin poped up on the TV showing the store I had stolen from, then it showed camera footage of the whole damn thing."

"So for the next four years I was running from police, rockets, and nutjob alien hunters. As you can guess I got captured, a lot slower than I expected, but I still did, but not by rockets, or anything in the above list, but by a Pokémon collector, I was walking through some woods and was suddenly in a net tied to a tree. The collector was there, and very disappointed that I wasn't a Pinsir. He recognized me from the news, I'm not sure how, it was a really terrible picture, and he seemed to be half blind, the poor idiot."

"Then he got a crapload of money after selling me to team rocket, like I was just some used car or something, I think I would have preferred a zoo." Star stretched out his wings.

"That's how it's been for a while now, on my second escape I evolved, then just before the last one I evolved again." He was cut short by the "wake up bell", this time a different rocket came in, and Star whispered "act one scene one" in Roses ear.

Their basic plan at this point was to mess with the rockets until they actually figured out a plan, which is, I admit, extremely pathetic.

Rose stood up and walked up to the rocket "Hello, you know, you guys must think your pretty scary, don't you?" she asked, smiling a disturbing smile.

"yeah well I'm a level two so you'd better wat" he got cut off, the kid was fuming, it actually looked like his head was on fire.

"Ooh a level twoo rocket I'm sure scared Rose, I might cry." Said Star sarcastically, then his tone suddenly turned dark and forceful, if the bricks in the wall had legs they would have run. "listen kid" he said, with acid dripping from his voice. "I've killed admins, admins close to Giovanni, I've been shot and tortured to a point that would have killed you, so you might think that you're scary but I doubt that you've ever even met a normal fully grown dragon type. And if you've never met one of those I doubt that you want to see what I can do, because you just might wet that diaper you're wearing. So if I were you I'd get the hell out of here"

The grunt pulled out his whip, his only weapon besides whatever Pokémon he had, and tried to speak again. His voice, though, was much less confident and his eyes were frightened. "This ought to shut y" he was cut off again, this time by Rose smacking him in the head and stealing his whip. "Go raticate, get my whip back!" The rocket, slightly delirious and frightened, was amazed he'd actually gotten a sentence out.

Rose looked at the rat Pokémon, "you look like a snack, I suggest that you go back into your pokéball before you get seriously injured."

She used scary face, it turned her eyes blood red, her fangs elongated and started dripping a blood-like substance, she started smoking out of her nostrils, and then she let loose a deep growl. The rats' eyes got huge and he transported himself back into his pokéball. Rose laughed.

The bell rang again, Rose put the whip in the rockets hand and pushed him out the door, he looked like he wanted to cry. Rose sent a tiny flame after him as he stumbled away.

"Do you think that he'll tell an admin?" Rose asked, not really concerned.

"Nah, he's a newbie, he won't tell, his pride won't let him, and he's to stupid." Star smiled. "He probably thinks he'll get a promotion if he takes one of us down, he wouldn't, he probably won't ever be a higher level than he is now. He isn't even actually the rank he said he was, I'm pretty sure he's just an underling."

"So, do you think that will work on most of them?" She asked, mostly to herself. Then she thought of another question.

"Oh, umm have you actually killed admins, or been tortured? Because that voice you used could have sent a herd of charging Tauros in the opposite direction." Rose glanced at him.

Star laughed, "No, I actually haven't killed anything before, I've never been able to do anything worse than accidentally break an Eevees leg. I suppose I'm going to have to at least mortally wound some of the humans if we're going to get out of here though." He moved the dust with his feet again. "I can be pretty damn scary when I want to, but most of it's show. I prefer just getting out of the situation before things get out of hand.

"So you've never killed anything…?" Rose trailed off, killing wasn't hard, she'd killed for food before. Sinking your claws into something as it struggled for it's last breath was easy, simple, natural. It was pure instinct to kill when you were hungry, it always will be. Rose thought about this. She had killed for food, and in self defense, but she shivered at the thought of killing in cold blood.

*************************************************************

"Giovanni we have reports on the group of morphs from rout thirty-two, near Violet City, many of them died, about thirty out of seventy were apprehended. There was one of much interest, a Charizard, her flame was out when she was found, but it had re-lit itself when the grunt who found her was coming back that way." Said the scientist.

"Good, now what about the Flygon?" Giovanni inquired.

"The Flygon was apprehended along with nine other morphs, We did as you said and paired him up this time, he's shown no signs of even trying to escape. Coincidentally we paired him with that Charizard I just told you about." Giovanni turned his chair around and looked out the window.

"I received status on their strengths yesterday, that Charizard is strong, she may be of use to us… That will be all for now Thomas, I have business to attend to." The scientist left, leaving Giovanni with his thoughts.

*************************************************************

Rose took down her opponent in just a few minuets, a Nidorino, and began "Act one scene two" of their plan, which was still an utterly pathetic, but they still hadn't thought of anything.

"Hey, rocket" she smiled, it was the same one as yesterday. "You guys are afraid of us aren't you?" the rocket opted not to answer. "I mean if I were you (she shuddered at the thought) I'd be scared too, having to fight some "monster" every day, wouldn't you?" she watched the admin prepare to leave. "Although, in our peoples eyes you guys are monsters" the rocket started walking out of the plexiglass door. "So how does it feel, fighting a person who could kill you, our people know what it's like, do you?"

The admin stopped. "You ARE NOT people, you are not someone, you are an it, a freak." Yes! She'd gotten a reaction out of her, which was more than she'd hoped for.

"That's a little harsh, coming from the same kind of monster that created us, don't you think?" Rose said with a light, slightly cocky tone. The rocket stared at her; fingered one of the pokeballs at her belt then turned and walked away quickly, tripping on her way out, again. Rose snickered, then the boy came in and placed food on the floor.

This time it was some sort of purple colored cereal, she looked closer at it, soon realizing soon that it was poke-chow. Rose shrugged and took a bite, "I am half Pokémon after all," she said to herself. "Maybe I'll like it." She did NOT like it, it was completely disgusting. She looked around; many of the morphs were pretty ok eating it, mostly dragon types, including Star.

She noticed a few morphs more today. A Grovyle morph who had just been beaten by a normal Charmeleon, Rose looked away quickly, not wishing for another outburst resulting in the loss of another speaker, instead she placed her attention on a Luxray morph who was neatly finishing up a battle with Hitmonchan.

She watched intently as the morph shot an electric bolt at his opponent, knocking it out. The rocket tried to recall the Pokémon but the morph stepped in front of the bright red beam. He seemed to be speaking to the rocket, which just backed into the wall. The hitmonchan started standing up and suddenly, just as it'd gotten to it's feet, the morph turned, electricity jumping up and down it's arms, and slashed it's throat. The effect was as if the Hitmonchan had an electric collar on hi that was choking it. Shudders ran through its body as it attempted to block the blow, but it was dead before it could even get its arms past its chest. The morph walked out of the room coolly, before the rocket, as he'd lived there his whole life.

Rose turned away, deciding to focus on the gross food. She was horrified; they were the good guys, weren't they? The rules of battle said that it was illegal to kill a trainers Pokémon, didn't they? Rose shook her head and regained her focus; she wanted to stop the rockets, that would mean doing unpleasant things. "That doesn't mean it's right to kill their Pokémon, they're just following orders, most of them don't know any better." she said to herself.

"But what if I had to?" she wondered, forgetting completely about killing the Fearow. "That Luxray didn't have to." She said, confusing herself. Rose sighed and ate the rest of the poke-chow; she had been absentmindedly eating it while she watched the Hitmonchan get killed and it was almost gone now. The bell rang and the doors opened, time to go. She stood up and stretched her wings as she walked through the open door.

"What's wrong?" asked Star "oh and what was that face for when they gave you the poke-chow, I know that we're part human but most of us morphed with dragon types seem to like that stuff."

Rose looked at him, "well first I'm not a dragon type, I'm fire and flying." She growled. "And second, I just saw a morph kill a trained Pokémon, killed by one of us, a morph. He just killed it, no warning, nothing, just dead, as if it were the one who'd caused this whole mess."

"He should've gone after the rocket not the Pokémon, the Pokémon was just doing what it was told to." Rose started shaking, the rooms temperature rising again.

"Woah now, calm down, did the morph happen to be a Luxray?" this caught Roses attention quickly, the room cooled down considerably, Star noticed that she seemed to calm down right away when he mentioned something she was interested in.

"You know him?" she asked.

"No, but I see him all the time, he almost always kills the Pokémon he's faced against." He said.

"Sound's like someone we need to get on good terms with, don't want him coming after me." Mumbled Rose.

"We can't get on any terms with any of the other morphs." Said Star, "not unless this base sustains an enormous amount of damage…" they both smiled at the thought.

"How did "Act two scene two" of our rather pathetic plan go for you?" he asked.

"Perfect," said Rose, "the rockets are so easy to beat I was done in just a few minuets." They continued talking until the light in the hall began to fade, the dark cells gray walls casting eerie shadows.

*************************************************************

The legendaries sat in a circle; the leader of the meeting was Rayquaza this time. "Do you know the matter of this meeting?" his rough voice said.

"It is the morphs again, am I correct?" asked a feminine voice belonging Latias.

"Grrrrate, what is wrong with them now?" asked an irritated Groudon, having been woken from his sleep.

Entei growled, "what business do we have with them, they seem to be taking care of themselves fine."

"Why are we here, this Is the fifth meeting this month!" grumbled Azelf, sitting next to Uxie and Mesprit, it was hard to tell but Uxie seemed to be asleep.

"Why can I never be left in peace, I know this has something to do with Giovanni and team rocket, or I wouldn't be here." Said Mewtwo calmly, though thoroughly irritated. He was one of the few legends who'd ever had experience with the group and he only ever seemed to be called to meetings when they were discussing the team, or Ash Ketchum. Of course he was the only one who'd ever really kept any sort of contact with him, so they usually only called him when there was some sort of earth threatening emergency.

"Would you all please be quiet, I did not call you here because I wanted to, this is on Giratinas orders," said Rayquaza, wishing he could be asleep in some giant broken down tower right now, but he knew he had to do this.

The legends immediately stopped complaining. "The matter of this is not focused on all of the morphs this time, this time it is focused on just those few; remember what you told us Celebi?" He said.

"You said that we wouldn't interfere in that matter, what is to happen is to happen, unless Arceus directly informs us to change something, you know that." Said Celebi, hoping that they really were changing something. It always got so boring just watching. "Besides, the future isn't set in stone; even things that I've seen can change!"

"I know this very well, but sometimes things must change, this is what we have come here to discuss. In this matter I'm on Giratinas side, we can't just let this happen, and I'm not going to just sit patently while it does." Said Rayquaza, he knew that discussing this subject was as fragile as glass, but even Giratina knew that this was wrong, and that made the world even more fragile than the discussion.


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter 4_

_**Day 3 in rocket camp**_

Rose shot straight up and hit her head on the ceiling, her breathing quick and shallow, she had been dreaming about home. She shook her head "I have no home, not anymore, the only place I have now is this stupid cell" she grumbled silently to herself. Her breathing calmed. She remembered her dream vividly.

She was a charmander, making a feather crown, she put it on her head and tied feathers to her arms and ran in circles, flapping them. She ran into their house, not really much of a house, more like a hut, but still her home. "Mommy, Daddy, lookie, now I can fly like you." Her high little kid voice sang.

Her father and mother laughed, and then her father picked her up, put her on his back, ran outside, and flew into the air. "There, now you can really fly." He said, laughing, as he rose into the air.

Then everything changed; she became a charizard, tearing into the back of a Fearows neck. She let it fall, and then shot flames at the inside of a helicopter marked with an R. She was electrocuted and fell to the ground.

Then she was in a battle, the rocket suddenly turned into Star and laughed evilly, sending out a giant Gyarados with a wave of water.

Rose shuddered, she wished her father was here, not this, "I just want to go home, or something like it." she whispered.

She got down from the bunk-bead and stretched. Star looked at her; "you were going nuts last night, were you having a nightmare?" He yawned.

"Yes, I was" she told him her dream, leaving out the part where he was the rocket. "Wow, I bet that dream had something to do with you missing home huh?" he asked a little regret in his voice.

"Yes, I miss home, a lot. I can't go there ever again though, I killed there. Besides, no one would be there." She looked down sadly.

"Make all of us morphs you're new home, even if you don't have a place to live at least you have people around you who care about you, that's what a home really is, isn't it?" Star smiled and looked at her.

"Star, you're really wise, no waaay to wise, and what only nineteen? I think you must have some Alakazam in you." She said, with a laugh.

"Well, you're way to strong, and only what eighteen? You must have some Machamp in you." Star laughed a little too.

"Want to hear a terrible joke?" asked Rose.

"Err, okay, but does it have to be terrible?" Rose laughed at his response.

"Yes, it does." She answered, and then told the joke.

"What goes peck peck peck BOOM!" she asked

"Do I really want to know?"

"Yes, you do: A Torchic in a field full of VoltAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRGGGGGG!!"

Rose's high pitched scream carried her down to the floor, as electricity traveled through her body. The Rocket, who they hadn't heard come in, had used a thunder gun on her. Then the rocket looked at Star, saw his angered face, smirked, and sent more electricity surging through Rose, making her scream again. Rose was able to keep consciousness only long enough to watch Star slash the surprised rockets throat.

She was floating in and out of conciseness, hearing Star talk to her. "Oh God… please stay alive…" she heard his broken sentences.

"Stupid rocket, you….. use electricity…. fire/flying type…"

"C'mon, you're the only friend I've ever had…"

"NO! STAY AWAY FROM HER, GO AWAY. AAAAAHHHHHRRRRGGGGHH" she heard an explosion. "AAAAHHHHRRRRGGGH…. She completely blacked out then, everything going silent in a pool of shadows.

*************************************************************

**TWO DAYS LATER**

"Is she waking up?" she heard a voice say.

"Stay away from her" she heard Star's voice growl. Then she slowly sat up, slightly dizzy, and looked around.

"Star….Star, I'm awake, who're you talking to?" He looked at her then looked at the rockets through the Plexiglass window, nine feet above his standing height.

He walked over to her "Lay back down, don't hurt yourself." He said quietly.

"I'm fine, it's ok" she said.

"No, it's not, you probably can't feel it, and I didn't even know it was possible, but you're burnt really bad." She looked at him; he was shaking, bruised, and covered in dried blood. They were in a silver and white room that was completely windowless and looked door less except for the window high above them…

"Star…what happened?" she asked.

"You've been out for two days, lay back down." He said again "Please." She lay back down, then asked again, with more force "Star, what happened."

Star paused "I killed four of them." He said quietly, "they were hurting you, and I killed them, two level three grunts and two admins. The only reason you're still in the same room as me is because Giovanni told them, directly, to keep me with you."

She looked at him; "I wonder why that is?" she questioned.

He frowned then laughed; the laugh sent shivers down her spine with the faint note of hysteria in it. "It's probably part of their plan to keep me from escaping." His voice was on the edge of cracking. "And honestly, it's working, if you weren't here I would have escaped again, maybe not though, I was getting sick of this little game anyway." His voice cracked and he started to sob. "DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I'VE BEEN IN THIS HELL? PLAYING THIS STUPID LITTLE GAME OF TAG!" He suddenly yelled out. "I've been playing for twelve years," he whispered, "if you weren't here I would have probably committed suicide by now, if you hadn't called me you're friend." He said, tears streaming down his face. "Rose, you are the only friend I've ever had, ever, my whole life, I've been running for too long, I never stayed in the same area long enough to make a friend." They sat in silence for the rest of the day; the only sound was their breathing.

*************************************************************

Later

Suddenly there was a crack in the wall, a light shone dimly, the door to the room opened, and a shadow walked in. "Who are you?" a curt but rough voice said, as the door snapped shut.

Star stood up and walked over to the figure that had entered. "My name is With the Wind and Among the Stars, just call me Star, I'm a Flygon morph." He said, a little bit of anger in his voice.

"The other one?" the figure asked. "Rose and Fang, call her Rose, a Charizard morph, my best and only friend,… unless you mean no harm." Star answered, growling a little on the last part.

The figure laughed, an unused and broken one "I mean no harm to morphs, but the Pokémon who serve the rockets have gotten on my nerves more than once, and I wouldn't say I was a friend. My name is Bolt Thunder Fang, call me Bolt, I'm a Luxray Morph. What the hell could you have done to piss off the rockets bad enough that they put you in here? I kill their Pokémon all the time, but you don't look like you could bring yourself to eat a pidgey."

Star glared at him, then Rose spoke up "He doesn't kill, not unless he's protecting someone he cares about." She said. "He killed four rockets, two at level three, and two admins. I, was shot with a thunder gun, it almost killed me." She said nervously. "I'm only here because there were orders from Giovanni…." She looked at the electric Pokémorph standing twelve feet in front of her.

Star walked back over to Rose and sat next to her. The morph looked at Star "Aaahhhh, still getting over the shock of first kill." He looked at Rose, "You're a fire/flying, easily brought down by electricity." He looked up then and shot a thunderbolt at the ceiling.

Star jumped and snarled at Bolt getting ready to attack. "Cool it, I was just turning on the light." He pointed to a bare wire that connected to six different light bulbs, they flickered on in a matter of seconds. Now that the room was lit Rose could see much easier.

There were two bunk beds, she was leaning on one, two doors that blended almost completely into the wall, "a bathroom and a hall door" she guessed, and a poke-proof locked cabinet sat in one corner. Other than that it was metal surfaced with a white ceiling, "great, I'm locked in a giant room that conducts electricity, with an electric Pokémorph." She muttered to herself.

Star looked at her and smiled, "don't worry about it, I'm a ground type, I'm not effected, I'd conduct any electricity shot anywhere but in the air anyway." He said, aiming his comment at the electric pokemorph.

Bolt laughed, "Don't worry, I can control myself better than that." He thought for a moment. "Hey, what made that rocket shoot you anyway?" he asked.

Rose grimaced, "apparently it's illegal to tell a joke." She said, her clawed fist digging into the palms of her hands. Bolt looked at her and smirked, "wow, you're basically in the prison from hell and you found some way to say something funny? The legends must have plans for you two." He said.

"I wish they didn't, I wish I could have stayed safe, at home. But the rockets will find everyone eventually, won't they?" she said darkly.

Bolt looked at Star, who was sitting with his head in his hands, "Well, if the legends don't have plans for you guys, Giovanni sure does."

Star nearly knocked Bolt out with the force he suddenly pinned him to the floor with. "What. Are. His. Plans? Star said slowly.

"Cool it, did you know that some rockets are actually attached to their Pokémon?" he said smugly.

"WHAT. ARE. HIS. PLANS? He repeated forcefully.

"Alright, just get off me!" Star moved. "A couple of the admins, were……convinced, to tell me about you, Rose, after I saw that horrified look on you're face when I killed that Hitmonchan, you had finished you're battle before me, that almost never happens, except for him." He nodded towards Star "Apparently Giovanni noticed that you're strength levels were way too high, especially 'cause you took out an admins level eighty aerodactyl in four moves." He looked at Roses astonished face and smirked, then he turned to Star.

"You're way way to smart, even though you don't use it everyone can tell, he thought you'd be a useful tactician. Now he just enjoys you're little game of tag, he wondered if you would try to escape if you had a friend." He looked at Rose. "Meaning no harm, but I'm surprised that you're still alive…I suppose that little outburst Star had is the only reason you are, Giovanni was planning to kill you so the game could continue. He must have changed his mind though."

Star growled, it wasn't annoyed, like usual. This time it was purely threatening. He walked away from Bolt and lay down on the bottom bunk of the bed on the left; the one Rose was leaning on. "Can't they hear us, up there?" Rose asked, looking at the Plexiglass window, where there were two rockets standing.

Bolt looked at her and gave a low growling chuckle. "No, not after I killed this side of communication system, I would be in a much stronger containment area if they could." He said smugly. "But we can still hear them." He smirked, "ya know, I didn't know it was possible for a fire type to get burnt, I bet you can't feel it."

Rose glared at him, growled, and then climbed to the top bunk of the bed she'd been leaning on. "At least there's more room in here, and light, and these beds are more comfortable." She mumbled. "Maybe rockets have more respect for people who've killed some of them." She thought, then she fell asleep, her nightmares were waiting.


	5. Chapter 5

I'll be editing the first chapters a lot, so if you care, i'll tell you when the edited versions are up. thanks for reading, here's chapter five. Reviews are always nice, and support is always appreciated.

Chapter 5

**Day six in rocket camp**

Rose was walking down a hallway, she recognized it, she was walking towards the fight room. Star and Bolt were next to her; there weren't any rockets around, just them. She wondered why they weren't escaping, but decided to keep walking. They walked into the room, the walls had been removed, there were marks on the floor where they had been. There were about eighty morphs standing behind the only wall left, each ones eyes following them solemnly, as if they had been sentenced to death. There were rockets too, smirking, their evil grins, she wanted to kill them. Their eyes followed them too; theirs had laughter in them.

A dark shadow stood across from them, an unknown voice asked a question. "What is your name, morph?" It asked, it was not mocking, just inquiring.

She stepped forward, "my name is Riz-ar-Rard, for human speech that translates to Rose-and-Fang, I have fought, and I will never stand down, this is my fight." She didn't decide to say those words, they just came.

"Rose-and-Fang…" he repeated the name slowly, then looked at star. "You are…?"

Star stepped forward to stand next to Rose on her right side. "I am With the Wind and Among the Stars, where Rose stands I stand, my greatest friend."

The shadow laughed, "yes, the Flygon morph, are we tired of tag?" Star growled, his fangs bared.

The shadow laughed again, then turned to Bolt. "Your name?"

Bolt stepped forward to stand on Roses left side. "I am Bolt Thunder Fang, I run with my friends."

Then the room went dark and she was by herself. Floating in silence, the only light, her tail. A voice sounded, calm but powerful. "Your life, choose its path carefully, the directions you can go… be careful..." Then it faded; she stood at a crossroads, the signs unreadable.

Rose woke up hyperventilating, Goosebumps up her arms and back, sweat running in her eyes. She didn't know why she was so frightened; the dream hadn't even been that scary. She took a deep breath and jumped down from her bunk, walking to the door she suspected was a restroom, not noticing as Star had his own dreams.

He was escaping from the rockets, flying towards the woods as fast as possible. The trees flashed by, he had escaped the rockets. He knew that a clan of morphs lived here, knew that they would help. He would lie low there for a few days, then set out again, staying on the run, he had to run, there wouldn't ever be another choice for him. He landed at the entrance to the Pokémorph city, this clan had the most morphs he had ever heard of, being in one place at one time other than at a rocket base. He walked in, asking for the leader while the two morphs standing sentry argued about what to do, which wasn't much.

He was directed to a large hollowed out tree. He started to explain his situation to the Alakazam morph that lived there. He listened patiently and had few questions or comments while Star told his story.

A Charmeleon morph ran in just before he'd finished his story. "GUMAR!! There are humans with helicopters marked with the letter R nearing the village, the rockets, what should we do?" she said urgently.

"Go tell the others to prepare for a fight, quickly." The fire morph left, running, calling out names. The Alakazam morph looked at Star angrily, "YOU LED THEM HERE!?"

Star's eyes widened, then he said in a whispered voice "No, no no no." he shut his eyes, covering them with his hands and digging his claws into his scalp, little dots of blood stained his hair. "I thought I lost them, I'm so sorry." The leader glared at him then walked out.

Star was suddenly in the middle of the battlefield, he watched people die, Pokémon die, morphs die, he shuddered, it was his entire fault, he'd led them there, families dead, separated, rockets dead, fire burned the forest, their home, everything was bleeding fiery red.

There was blood everywhere, being drunk by the ground and flowing in rivers from bodies. Rockets walked through the massacre, searching for survivors no doubt. One spotted him, sent out a Golbat, telling it to use mean-look. Star ignored the attack, started walking towards the truck they were loading, there was no point in running, he'd escape as soon as they locked him up anyways. "All my fault, I murdered them, all my fault." He said to himself as he took his place in one of the cages in the half filled truck.

The dream changed and he looked down, there was blood everywhere, again. Four humans in shirts marked with R's lay there, their throats slashed open, blood spilling out of wounds in their sides and caking their black shirts to the floor, the smell was nauseatingly cloying and sweet. He picked Rose up, surprisingly light for a Charizard morph, and carried her, he walked to the advanced holding area, he knew this place better than anyone else, he knew where everything was. Rockets followed behind him stunned, not knowing what he would do next. "I killed them, it's all my fault, I'm a murderer, I killed them all, and it's my fault." Suddenly he felt a shaking.

Rose walked over to Star, he was tossing and turning, muttering something about murder, she shook him awake. He opened his eyes, and then sat up. He put his head in his hands after barely glancing at her. "All my fault, all my fault, murderer, all my fault, I killed them, all my fault." He kept saying, sounding like he was choking on the words. He leaned against the wall behind the bed.

"Star, Staaraar, can you here me, are you ok?"

He didn't look up, "all my fault, their blood, all my fault, my claws, so many." he groaned. "All my fault, all my fault." He looked sick.

BAM! Rose smacked him, "WITH THE WIND AND AMONG THE STARS! WAKE UP!" he jumped then he looked up taking deep breaths of air.

"I'm sorry." He said looking at her with blank eyes.

"Well, I think that we're all awake now, I've been here for Three years, and this is the first time anything but that damned bell has woken me, if I'd slept." Said a voice from behind Rose.

She jumped, then glared at Bolt. "I suppose that you think you're funny don't you?" she growled at him.

"No, I really don't, what's wrong with you're friend?" Bolt asked, his tone as close to concern as he could get it.

Star looked at him, "I'm fine, go away." He said quickly, irritated that the Luxray morph had even asked.

"Star, what's wrong, you are not fine." Rose demanded, worry deep in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, I really don't want to talk about it right now, I'll tell you when I can, though you'll probably hate me afterwards."

Rose shook her head at him, "Don't be stupid, and don't be angry at yourself for killing those rockets, it's not your fault."

Star took a deep breath. "It is my fault though, it all is. I promise I'll tell you about it later."

Rose stood up and stretched "ok, should we continue to Act three scene one of our pathetic plan?" she asked him, figuring that it'd be pointless to try prying the answers out of him.

"Ha" Bolt snickered, "what are you doing, shooting a movie?" he laughed.

"Actually, this probably wouldn't make a bad movie, but no." Star stated.

Bolt looked at him, and then said mockingly, "So, was part of you're plan to massacre four rockets and land in an advanced cell?" Star stiffened, the only part of him moving was his chest as he breathed.

"If you Ever, Ever make a comment like that again I swear to you that I will personally rip out your guts out through a hole in your throat, then stuff you with metal shavings, while you are still alive, do you understand?" Rose said this with dark menace, the heat in the room growing.

Bolt could hardly speak, he just nodded then muttered one word spitefully, "Leader."

Rose glared at him, "what is that supposed to mean?"

"You've never seen a pack of Pokémon have you?" he asked, smirking.

"You mean like a group, with an alpha and such, right?" she was interested now, the room cooled down.

"Yes, when I said "leader" it meant that you are the alpha. You're considerably stronger than I am, even though I have the element of electricity on my side. You could most likely beat me in a match where we didn't use moves, and I really don't wanna fight someone who's on the same side as me, or else I'd probably fight for the position right now, so, you win." Then he added in an undertone "And you just threatened to stuff me with metal shavings and God knows there's enough metal in this room for that to happen."

Rose looked at Star, "well, I suppose that we're a pack now, whatever the heak that means." She laughed.

Star chuckled a bit, then he sighed. "Ya know, this is the closest thing to a family I've ever had, in a long time. It's nice to know that someone cares…"

Rose looked at him then smiled. "Don't be stupid, every morph in this facility cares about you, even if they don't know you, remember what you told me?" He looked at her blankly, she rolled her eyes "You said, 'Make all of us morphs you're new home, even if you don't have a place to live at least you have people around you who care about you, that's what a home really is, isn't it?' you know I'm right."

Star looked at her and smiled, then he grinned, then he laughed, "I suppose I can't deny something I said," then he frowned, "ya know, this is why we're here in the first place right?" they both laughed.

"I don't get it." Mumbled Bolt, shaking his head. "Why'd they have to give me psychos for roommates?"

The bell rang, Rose looked at Bolt, "Follow our lead, and don't attack anyone." He rolled his eyes.

Two rockets with thunder guns and at least three Pokémon each walked in. you could tell that they were admins the way they carried themselves, they also had an air of importance, and a look of stupidity. "Hello, what are your names?" Rose politely asked.

"Why?" grunted one of the rockets, making both of them sound like idiots.

"Well, you two are probably some of the strongest rockets here so it's only natural that you would come and guard the cell with the most dangerous morphs, and if you're guarding us that means that you think your Pokémon can defeat us. So if I'm faced in a battle with one of you it seems that if I loose it won't matter weather or not I know your names, and I'll be able to congratulate you properly before you kill me." She said this very fast, the rockets made an attempt to look as if they understood what she'd just said but ended up just looking confused.

"Why don't I start, not that you care what my name is anyway, my name is Rose, this is Star." She said in a demeaning tone as she pointed to him. "And this is Bolt." The rockets just stare at like she's lost her mind, then the bell rings. The first rocket walked out, the second stayed for just a few seconds, staring at her, there was something about her suddenly that made it seem like she knew something important, and then she left quickly.

"Huh, well that was indescribably weird, what was that for?" asked Bolt, "I'm glad you told me not to attack anyone though, one of them was gonna shoot you, I think."

"Well thanks for not attacking them because they were only thinking about shooting me, although, if he had shot me…" she trailed off for a moment. "Anyway, that was just to confuse the crap out of them, if we can effectively start them thinking about something they do poorly in their battles, when one of us wins a battle too easily we give the rocket more to think, or just be pissed off about." She paused for a moment, "I think we want them to think we're trying to escape, or that we're insane, which is probably winning."

Bolt looked at her, then at Star. "Ok, well if you want the humans to think we're nuts that's fine, but I suggest you wear these." He threw Rose a pair of leather gloves he pulled out from under his bed. "If you get shot again they might help, you can cut the fingers off, makes it easier to use moves like Slash."

He held up an almost paw like hand, on it was a glove, the same kind, with the fingers cut off. He threw Star a pair, "I know that electricity doesn't effect you, but it never hurts to have extra protection."

Stars claws glowed with a purple light, then he quickly cut the fingers off the gloves. Rose heated her claws with her tail, then sliced through the leather as if it were paper. "At the village we worked with leather a lot, though I'm not sure where we got it. Mom taught me that."

Rose looked down sadly for a moment, then looked up as Star asked a question. "How can you wear leather without it affecting your attacks?"

Bolt almost laughed at this. "I used to have to wear leather or every time something touched me I'd electrocute it, I can control electricity better now though, so it's just a habit." He said just as the bell rang, and they were escorted to the fight room.

Rose and Star were led into a larger room, instead of one field this was the size of two, you could see where the glass had been removed. Bolt was lead into a room next to them, this one was normal size, but you could see scorch marks on the glass and… blood stains, in the floor. It was apparently Bolts personal fight room.

They didn't have much time to look at their surroundings, soon the two rockets from earlier walked in. "My name is Joe." The man smiled evilly.

Then the girl spoke. "My name is Kaylee." She smirked.

Then Joe spoke again, "we're going to beat you. This is a double battle field, if one of you looses, you both die." He explained as he threw out a poke ball.

"GO! Rampardos!" he yelled. The girl, Kaylee, threw her pokeball silently, "DEL! Delcatty!" the Pokémon purred as it appeared out of its pokeball. Rose and Star braced themselves for attack.

"THUNDER!" yelled the man, the Rampardos roared then started charging electricity.

"Delcatty, use Double Edge." Said Kaylee calmly.

"DEL!" it nodded then ran full force straight at Star.

"Shit! Rose, in the air!" Star spread his wings then jumped, Rose did the same, she had just barely gotten into the air when the Rampardos let a massive bolt of electricity loose straight at her. Star flapped his wings, sand materializing out of nowhere, and shot it straight at the attacking Pokémon, jumping between the electricity and Rose.

"HEAD SMASH!" yelled Joe.

"Delcatty, IRON TAIL!"

Rose shot a Flame-thrower at the advancing rock type then, as the Delcatty jumped to hit her she slammed her tail against its.

"ASSIST!" the normal types eyes glowed.

"DRAGON RAGE!!" Rampardos roared then shot purple fire at Star, hitting him straight in the chest.

"STAR!" Rose yelled.

"Rose, LOOK OUT! BEHIND YOU!!" She turned in time to see the Delcatty open her mouth and shoot a hundred gallons of water at her. Instantly Roses instincts took over. She dove then spun just underneath the water, inches from the ground, her wings barely brushing against the water and shot a flame-thrower at the Pokémons forelegs, not thinking first, not thinking at all.

"ZEN HEADBUTT!" the man shouted.

Rose saw a flash of light come from Star just as she rammed her head into the Delcattys chest. The cat-like Pokémon screamed as it flew backwards.

Rose landed, "THUNDER!!!" screamed the male rocket. Rose shot a flame-thrower at Rampardos before it could attack. Then she slammed the Delcatty with her tail as the female rocket called out an attack.

Rose couldn't hear anything, see, or feel anything, she was numb, she just attacked. Fury raged through her, she could do anything, she was wild, and she wanted to KILL. She felt her fangs, running her tong along the razor sharp bones. Her claws were deadly weapons, waiting for blood to run through her fingers.

Star got up from the attack then flew into the air, he slammed into the floor, shattering the tile, sending shock-waves at the now defending Pokémon.

The cat fainted and was soon called back into it's pokeball. "Thank you Delcatty, you did well, I know that was hard." Kaylee whispered to it, out of notice from the other rocket.

The Rampardos shook itself and stood up. Rose charged at it, slamming it into the Plexiglass, cracking it, and again, sending shards flying. Then she placed her claws up to the fainted Pokémons neck, she was going to kill it, she wanted its blood on her claws, to feel its heart stop, she could feel it's pulse, she felt her claws, digging into it's leather hard flesh.……

"ROSE!! STOP IT!!!" yelled a voice. Stars voice. She felt something click, "It's not the Pokémons fault." she gasped. She dropped the rock type to the ground, it suddenly felt like it weighed hundreds of pounds, which it did.

The rocket called it back to its Pokéball, and ran out shouting something, Rose didn't hear, she was numb, "the glass?" she mumbled, staring at the mess around her. Star nodded. Her gaze drifted; over the shards, some of them crimson, and up to the wall where a hole had been smashed into the wall. "The blood too?" he nodded again. "oh."

Kaylee stood there for a moment, staring at Rose, then walked out swiftly. She seemed to be considering something.

Rose looked into the cell on her right, the side she hadn't cracked. Bolt was there, looking at Star disapprovingly, as if he'd done something wrong; Rose wondered what. She looked at the cell to her left again, the cracks spider-webbing quickly from the point of impact. A Scyther morphs battle had stopped, she was faced with a rockets Gligar. They were staring at her, she looked around, many morphs, rockets, and Pokémon were staring at her.

Star walked over to her; "You cracked the glass." he murmured, as if she didn't know who'd done it. Rose took a deep breath then sat down. A boy opened the door and slid two dishes into the room; they stopped where Star had ruined the floor.

Rose ate absentmindedly; she didn't pay attention to what it was, or how it tasted, she didn't move, afraid of herself.

*************************************************************

"Why did you stop her?" Demanded Bolt once they were back in the cell. "Because she didn't want to kill it, she didn't make a conscious choice to, I don't believe she ever would either." Star said defensively.

"If the rockets have one less Pokémon to battle with it just gets us one step closer to defeating them." Argued Bolt.

"It's not the Pokémons fault it has to fallow the orders its trainer gives it. They are innocent." Star growled at him.

"I'm going to bed." Rose said quietly.

She did not sleep well, Bolt and Stars argument continued for most of the night. Eventually Star climbed into the bed under hers. Rose had nightmares, mostly of crossroads and blank signs. Sometimes she was killing the Fearow again; sometimes she had her claws against the Rampardos neck, feeling the skin split as she pressed harder.

*************************************************************

"MewTwo, you broke the rules." Said Mew quietly, sadly, the other legendaries nodded.

"I'm sorry about her dream, it needed to be done." MewTwo said calmly.

"I know, but you still broke the rules, there has to be a punishment, no matter how much we agree with you." Mew said, authority in his voice.

"Yes, I've already accepted that, what is the punishment?" he said calmly.

"That's the problem, punishing you is almost impossible, you've been through so much hell that there's pretty much nothing we can do to you, the only thing we can do is banish you from the board concerning the morphs." Mew spoke sadly, this was as much MewTwos war as it was the morphs.

"You know that doing that will just make me break more rules, this is my fight too, and I'm not going to stop just because you said so. You should know that by now." MewTwo laughed.

Mew smiled "I think we just found our loop-hole, although it will end with at least two of us being banished from the realm of the legends forever, or dead."

Rayquaza sighed. "Do what you have to, but remember, it is their choice, we can only hope to steer them in the right direction." MewTwo nodded, then teleported out of the realm.

*************************************************************

"Giovanni, the Charizard Morph cracked the glass, she's stronger than we thought, should we change anything?" Thomas asked.

"No, fix the glass, don't change anything." Thomas walked out of the room, he realized that his creations needed to be destroyed, they were too strong. He walked into his lab, the same lab his father had used when the first, the real, Giovanni had been in charge.

The same lab where the blueprints for cloning had been developed, now the same lab where he had created the morphs. "Both defiant, both destructive, both a harm to the human race." He thought to himself. "If the morphs are discovered, they will surely be the fall of us, they're too different. Some are able to be captured, like Pokémon, others are not, they are stronger than humans, sometimes smarter too." He sighed to himself. "What have I done?" he sat down. "They are alive, they are living and thinking, they have souls, I created them, I've loved them and cared for them." He put his head in his hands. "What have I done!?" He yelled the sound of his voice, his turmoil, reverberating off the walls.


	6. Chapter 6

Okay, this is a huge time jump, just so you know. I didn't want any confusion.

___________________________________________

Chapter Six

**Four weeks and four days in rocket camp**

Nothing out of the ordinary had happened in twenty-six days, no new morphs had come, no freak outs because of the nightmares they had, pretty much the only thing new was that they only had to go to the fight room about four times a week. Oh, and all the rockets were afraid of her, she guessed that's why they only went to the fight room every other day.

She, Star, and Bolt worked out plans to freak out the rockets, they mostly worked, but it was getting boring, messing with the same rockets every day. Everything was routine now. Wake up from nightmare or just plain twisted dream, mess with rockets 'til they wanted to shoot you, go to fight room or discuss plans on how to eventually start a war that would either kill them all or destroy the team rocket, spar, develop new tactics for battle, eat gross food that was either overcooked or was cereal, stay up for three hours and argue, sleep, have nightmare about someone dying…repeat.

For a while that's how it was, then she woke up to voices, coming from the Plexiglass window at least twelve feet above the floor.

"Hey, Mike, Why do you think they're still alive?"

"I don't know, Joe, what do you think?" She lay very still, this could be important.

"I don't know, maybe Giovanni likes them, but that Charizard," he spat the word "was gunna kill my Rampardos before the Flygon morph told her not to." Rose cringed; she hated herself for loosing control like that.

"I'm surprised that the Luxray hasn't killed her yet though." Said the voice belonging to Mike. "So, what do you think, I know that putting a spy in there could be risky, especially if it got caught." Roses muscles tightened, she quickly relaxed, hoping that the rockets didn't notice.

"It might work, the morphs who singed up for it are smarter than most, stronger too, although I don't see why they'd want too, other than it buys them some time."

She heard Star groan. "Star, don't move, pretend you're still asleep." She whispered. She heard him roll over.

It was silent for a few minuets. "That was close, I thought he woke up. I don't know if we should go on strength here, those two are stronger than most morphs." Rose noticed how whiney Joe's voice was. " I wish we could hear them, it's irritating that they won't fix the speaker so we can."

Rose heard Star suppress a laugh. Joe sighed. "Ya know, that Charizard looks oddly familiar." Her arms grew goosebumps.

"It's odd that the Flygon escaped at the same time we went to find that clan, he just made it that much easier, how did you know about them anyway?" asked Mike. Rose heard Star stiffen.

"About four years ago, about two years after I started training, I got lost in those woods. The morphs let me stay there for a couple days. I asked them if I could have a battle, a Charmeleon morph accepted. Dragonite, when she was a Dragonair, didn't want to battle a freak, and now I agree with her, the morphs are dangerous, that Charmeleon would've probably killed her, I wonder if they're the same?" It was the one named Joe.

Roses head was buzzing, she couldn't concentrate on what they were saying. "They might be, anyway, what should we do with the whole spy thing?"

Rose took a deep breath, calming herself. "Yeah we should ha… ones awake."

Rose heard Bolts footsteps. "RAR!!"

Rose jumped, "WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM!!" she yelled at him.

He was laughing. "Sorry, I needed a good laugh, did I wake you?"

she glared at him. "No, next time you wake up you might wanna listen for a while though, they're gunna put a spy in here, I think." She jumped down from the bed, her mind still buzzing. "Star?"

He turned his head towards her. "I'm sorry Rose."

"It wasn't your fault." she sighed with irritation.

"Yes it is, you could've escaped if I hadn't shown them the way!"

She shook her head. "We would've been captured eventually anyway, and even if it would've given us time it wouldn't have been much."

Star looked down. "I hate myself." He mumbled.

"Star, don't be stupid, did you hear the rest of what they said?" she asked sharply. He looked up. "Something about battling a Charmeleon morph in that place when he was a kid, right?"

Rose smirked, "Maybe it is the legends, you can never know."

Star looked at her, slightly confused, then it sunk in. "It's not my fault?" he sounded stunned.

"Finally! No, it's not your fault, DUH! If the rockets were looking for us then there was nothing we could've done in the first place!" Rose was relieved, "Poor Star" she thought "He's been blaming himself for all those deaths ever since the village was attacked." A fire started in her eyes. "I'm going to see if you can request battles." She said confidently as she looked up at the window.

Bolt yawned. "Not that your conversation has been extremely informative." He said sarcastically. "But what the hell is going on?!" Star looked over at him then explained his situation to him. Then Rose told him about the trainer with the Dragonair. "So you were suicidal because you thought you killed over a hundred people, and you want a rematch with that Joe what's his person so you can tell his stupid Pokémon to shut the hell up…right?"

Rose smirked "That sounds about right to me."

Bolt shook his head. "You two are nuts, am I allowed to kill the rockets Pokémon today?" Rose sighed, she and Bolt had come to an impasse, a way he could mess with the rockets, that [I]he[/I] was happy with. The plan was that sometimes he killed their Pokémon and sometimes he didn't, there was no pattern, it was just a random tossup, the flip of a coin.

Rose wasn't happy with the arrangements but it was better than having someone innocent die [I]every[/I] day. "No, and if you think we're nuts look at yourself, you're asking someone if it's O.K. to kill people!"

Bolt growled at her "Technically they're not people."

Star sighed, they had been going at each others throats on this issue for weeks. "Can you talk to them?" he said calmly.

"Yes" Bolt growled.

"And we can understand them when they speak, can't we." His voice still calm.

Bolt growled again "Yes, but they can't talk to humans, we're part human, so we're people, and they are not."

Star shook his head. "For being part Pokémon you're pretty freaking racial, Pokémon have a strong bond with humans, they have souls, they think and learn, so they are people." Star was getting angrier and louder.

Bolt yelled "WHAT IF WE DON'T HAVE SOULS, WHAT IF Pokémon DON'T HAVE SOULS?"

Star was yelling too now. "MAYBE IT'S JUST YOU WHO DOESN'T HAVE A SOUL!!" He screamed.

Both were suddenly attacking each other, Bolt uselessly sent out a bolt electricity, Star bit his shoulder. Rose pulled them apart after a few seconds, she was appalled by the fact that they were so easily able to attack each other. She glared at them both, then spoke loud and clear. "YOU TWO NEED TO STOP." She spoke every word with clarity, pausing between each one.

"You're acting like children, now I'm not sure weather or not we have souls but you can bet my tail flame that if I hear another word on the subject I'll make sure you find out the answer to that question!" she spoke quietly. "Do you understand?" both Star and Bolt looked shocked, then nodded.

"Good, the bell is going to ring in a minute so I suggest that you get ready." They didn't have much of a plan to mess with the rockets today, but what happened shocked them; instead of confusing a rocket she confused them.

The bell rang and Rose walked directly in front of the door then sat down about eight feet away from it. Then a rocket walked in by herself. Rose raised an eyebrow at her. "No one else is with you?"

The rocket laughed. "Nope, just me and my Pokémon."

Rose glared at her. "So which is it, did you decide to commit suicide or are you just stupidly brave?" she snapped.

The rocket laughed again, it was light laugh, one that had a ring of kindness to it. "No, I'm not committing suicide, and I honestly don't think you would kill an ally, would you?"

All Three looked up in surprise. "You know, the rockets aren't the only ones who have spies, and I know you overheard that conversation those two had up there, they're rather stupid, those two. I don't blame them though, it's the only place to talk in private, and every one else's been afraid to go up there since you almost broke through eight inches of plexiglass."

Rose stood up and walked over to her. "How did you convince them to let you in here by yourself?"

She smiled. "The grunt I was with is scared to death of you guys, so I ditched him and came alone, I can't believe you cracked that glass, not even a level forty Steelex could crack that stuff." She was clearly over-impressed.

"If you haven't noticed, Rose is a little more than level forty." Said Star confidentially. "Who are you?"

She smiled, again. "You don't remember me from your double battle?"

Bolt laughed "Neither of them try to remember anything about it, all cause Rose was gunna kill a Rampardos." Star glared at him, he smirked.

"I've never seen a morph loose control like that before, do you have any clue what triggered it?" asked Kaylee.

Rose glared warily at her, "No, I'm not sure what triggered it, and I still don't trust you, but I have a request."

Kaylee frowned. "What is it?"

Rose smiled, and that odd fire entered her eyes again. "I want a rematch with Joe, tell him to bring his Dragonite, tell him I'm the same one."

The bell rang; Kaylee looked at her for a moment, " I'll see what I can do," and left.

Star looked at Rose, slightly alarmed. She saw his glance. "Don't worry, I'm just out to prove that I'm "of mews creation" as the Dragonite so kindly put it."

Star shook his head, "I know this will probably make you mad, and I'm not worried that you'll make the _conscious_ choice to kill it, but what if you loose control again?" Star was right, to a certain extent it did make her mad, but she knew he was right, what if she did loose control again? It was the same Rocket too.

Bolt rolled his eyes, "so what if she looses control, it'll" Rose cut him off.

"Bolt, I know this may be hard for you to understand," her voice was calm but they could hear the menace behind it. "But most people don't enjoy killing, they usually try to avoid snapping someones neck, so I would appreciate it if you would stop being such a homicidal freak."

"Fine, I'm sorry". He growled.

"Star, I haven't lost control like that before in my life, and it's been forever since it happened, I'm pretty sure I can handle it, and if I can't, well, we'll see.

Rose and Star sat and talked about a plan they'd been working on for the last week until the bell rang.

Bolt was still muttering about Pokémon, but at least it was to himself.

Rose walked into one of the cells; Star and bolt took the ones on either side of her. Joe walked in, "well, this is odd, I don't think a morph has ever specifically asked to battle a certain person before."

Rose growled "Send your Dragonite out."

He smirked. "Or a certain Pokémon, won't she be pleased that the freak from that colony of morphs wants to have a real battle. GO, DRAGONITE! Look who's here."

The battle started abruptly, without the rocket giving any command, his Dragonite launched into the air. "Well now, aren't you a fine sight, aren't you that Charmeleon morph from a while back?"

Rose smirked, then dodged a slam then shot flames at her. "At least you remember me, what changed your mind about battling 'freaks'?" Rose shot straight at her only to turn and slam her own tail in Dragonites face.

"I decided that ridding the world of them was better than leaving them alone." Then the Pokémon flew and slammed its wing in Rose's face only to be shredded by sharp teeth.

"Battling is a thing of honor, at least I thought. Maybe Dragonite aren't as heroic and honorable as all the old stories say after all." Rose taunted as the Pokémon unsteadily landed.

"On the ground, freak, we will do this proper." Rose landed. "Riiight, because fighting for a member of some twisted evil team that'll kill you when he's had his fun is proper, right?" she ran at her, fist outstretched and blazing, she hit her mark.

Dragonite was prepared and slammed an aqua tail into Rose as her fist made contact with her chest. "Nothing about you is proper, and Joeseph cares more about me than anyone on earth! Pokémon should only fallow orders from humans unless they are wild. They shouldn't be able to be the human too."

They both paused for a moment, to catch their breath. "You work for the rockets, that's not proper, they kill Pokémon for fun, are you having fun," then knowing it would anger her added. "Sister?"

It worked, she snarled then used outrage, sending a wall of fire at Rose. "I am not your sister!!"

Rose braced herself and took the hit, then jumped from the flames and, with purple fire around her claws slashed Dragonites other wing. "Yes we are, we can both use moves, can't we?" she dodged a thunder punch. "Both of us know how to fly, both of us have a distinct hate for one another, both of us evolve, learn new moves." She shot a flame-thrower towards her opponent. "We can talk to each other, we're both battling without instruction, I'd say we have more in common than you know." Then she paused for a minuet, Dragonite building up energy. "And we both have mews DNA." She finally added.

Dragonite shot a hyper beam at her, Rose almost dodged it, but it hit her shoulder just as she retaliated with another flame-thrower. "We are not sisters, you are not a part of mew, you're just another experiment gone wrong!"

Rose roared then made a tornado of flames, spinning her tail. "THEN I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL SISTER, I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL!!" she shouted over the noise. The flames engulfed Dragonite just as she sent a twister of purple fire at Rose. The bell had rung, but they still fought.

They both panted, the attacks taking most of their energy. Then ran at each other, both engulfed in the purple fire of a dragon rage. "You're strong" panted Rose.

"Likewise, for a Morph." said Dragonair, also panting, as they slammed into each other. Then Dragonair shot a hyper beam. Rose sent out a roar of flames. The two attacks met, and exploded.

Then the dust cleared. "If you're going to kill me, like you tried to kill Ramparados, make it quick." Dragonite panted, barely standing.

Rose shook her head; "I'm not a killer, that was an accident." Rose was panting too, but her eyes had fire in them.

Dragonite looked up. "Yeah, and so were the ruins of Alph." She rolled her eyes.

Rose shook her head again. "I'm not sure what happened, I only remember after Star called my name."

Dragonite growled, "Well, he's still in the hospital, and you still cracked his skull." Rose was mortified, she almost threw up. "I cracked his skull?" she swallowed hard, to get rid of the bile rising in her throat.

"Yes, you cracked a Ramparados skull, which is almost impossible, if I might add." They both almost fell over, but then regained their posture.

"Tell him I'm sorry, I doubt he'll believe me, but tell him anyway." Rose locked onto Dragonites eyes.

"I'll tell him, and next time we meet we're fighting to the death, weather you like it or not."

Rose was saddened. "Do you really hate us that much?"

Dragonite shook her head. "No, but I'd rather die in a battle with you than die for the rockets, I think you're right, there's no honor in battling for the rockets, and I have none left, not if I finish this."

Rose nodded. "Fine then, next time we meet, one of us is going to hell."

Dragonite smiled. "Next time we meet, I'll send you there." Then she fainted and Joe called her back to her Pokéball.

He stoked the top of it then reattached it to his belt, then looked at Rose. "You made a deal with her." It wasn't a question, he knew.

"Yes, next time we meet, it's a fight to the death, I'm sorry."

He laughed. "Don't apologize, it was her choice, I may not agree with her, but it's her decision.., how she dies." Rose was confused, he saw it in her eyes. "I've never have any say in what she does, that's why she battled without command, she's my very best friend and I let her do what she wants."

Rose smiled. "I suppose some rockets do see their Pokémon as more than tools, but you're still evil, and we will defeat you."

He started walking away. "Of course, I wouldn't expect anything else, that's the way it's always been."

Rose looked around and noticed that she was the only one left in the fight room, except Star, he was waiting for her. She pulled open the glass door and walked over to him, they started walking back to the room. "Sooo, a fight to the death huh?"

Rose looked over at him. "Yep, not any time soon though, maybe not even here."

Star looked at her utterly perplexed. "Why?"

Rose thought for a moment. "I'm not sure, but it needed to be done."

He shook his head then smiled. "She honestly looked like it'd be an honor to be killed by you, I wonder what she was thinking."

Rose shrugged. "Who knows, we might die here before we ever find out."

Star paused, then looked at her. "We are not dying here, and soon no one else will have to either either, we're escaping soon, then we'll find the champion, and team rocket will fall for the last and final time." Rose felt energy radiating off him, his eyes shone.

She knew the plan, the problem was that she wasn't sure if it would work, "it'd be so much easier if…. WAIT!" she thought. "Kaylee, she's a spy, maybe…" She and Star were almost to the advanced cell, she told him her plan. "I'm still not sure if we can trust her, but we'll probably fail without her, and we've got nothing to loose if she double crosses us."

Star looked at her, his eyebrow raised. "Except possibly our lives."

Rose laughed. "And how much are those worth if we're stuck in this hell hole, we'll tell Bolt and in the morning we'll see if we can trust a rocket."

She and Star walked in the room. Bolt threw two pairs of clothes at her, black outfits marked with R's… "Where did you get these!?" she said in alarm. "Oh please, I didn't kill them, I just knocked them out and stuffed them in a closet somewhere." He rolled his eyes.

"And you couldn't raid the locker rooms you told us about why…?" she questioned.

"Hmmm, I'm not sure…umm, this was more fun…?" it was Roses turn to roll her eyes.

"What happens when they tell their boss?" Bolt laughed, "I didn't let them see me, DUH, an easy feat when you can see through walls."

Rose and Stars eyes grew huge. "YOU CAN SEE THROUGH WALLS!!" they yelled angrily at him.

"It would've been nice of you to mention that while we were planning our escape." Star growled at him.

"Sorry, I sort of forgot, I can't see through the walls in here, there's a layer of mirrors behind the plexiglass and a layer of steel on top of that. There's been no reason to use it in the fight room, since you can see through the walls already, why, does it change the plan?"

Star walked over to him. "It changes the plan, but not much. Besides we've decided to see if that Kaylee person really is an ally, if she isn't then we'll have to run for it, and being able to see rockets on the other side of a wall might help." He explained the new parts of the plan to Bolt, who agreed grudgingly, not keen on the idea of recruiting help from a human.

Rose climbed up to her bed, "soon, maybe even in less than a week, we'll be out of this hellhole forever." She said. Then she thought to herself: "I feel sorry for Star, he's been fighting for this all by himself for years. And all the times he's been here… I've only been here for a month and it feels like forever." She curled up on her side, being careful to make sure her tail didn't set the bed on fire, and went to sleep.

****************************

"What's your plan." MewTwo thought to himself. He'd been hiding deep in a little known cave for a few days now, he knew that if he exposed himself in any way shape or form, or was found, team rocket would be there in less than three minuets. He also knew that they still had files on him from twenty years ago when Giovanni found him and the other clones in purity lake. And he knew that Giovanni had been replaced by his apprentice and was sure that he wouldn't hesitate to come after the Pokémon his senior had been chasing for years.

MewTwo thought back to when a boy had so selflessly ran between him and Mew, nearly killing himself, and when that same child had saved him at Purity Lake. "I wonder where that child is now." He said to himself. "Maybe he could help me again, just this once." MewTwo sighed, he knew that he would help the morphs at all costs, so they wouldn't make the same mistakes he had. He stood up and stretched, then shut his eyes and began searching for Mews mind. He quickly located it and sent him a message. "I'm going to find the boy, you know the one." He didn't wait for Mew to answer as he teleported out of the cave.

***************************

Thomas sat on a bench outside the building, thinking about his fathers' history, he knew it well. He remembered being told by his mother about it when he was ten, remembered how she cried even then about their first child, Amber, who had died. He had only become a rocket to undo what his father had done, instead he'd made things worse, improving the already existing morphs blueprints, the experiments that his father had been working on before his daughter died.

He thought sadly about his first success, he had been able to combine human and Pokémon DNA to create a Meowth morph, it had been docile but had a very strong will and soon escaped. He remembered bribing a traveling circus to get him back. He watched the morph grow while he created others, after about five years he'd made about thirty morphs. They grew at about the same rate as Pokémon did; he'd worked on slowing their growth rate so that as they grew into adults they would evolve, sometimes one would evolve early under harsh circumstances though. He'd worked to figure this out for hours, and gotten nowhere. He'd hoped to one day fix his fathers mistakes, and now he'd made his own.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

**Four weeks five days in rocket camp time to escape, or die trying.**

Ash walked down the street, he sighed, people were still, even after ten years, trying to copy him. Ever since he'd become a master everyone had challenged him to a battle, kids, adults, even their grandparents! You name it; he'd probably battled it. It was getting so annoying he'd actually resorted to dying his hair, Blond. He hated it but almost no one recognized him, and since it seemed that everyone had a Pikachu following them now, that wasn't a problem either. Every one out of ten people had a fake Pokémon HQ league championship cap, so everyone thought he was just another impersonator. His mother had had to move, and Ash was never stationary for long.

He'd decided to actually go to a Pokémon HQ meeting, he usually made an excuse so he didn't have to go, he hated drawing attention to himself. And going to one of those meetings was the biggest way that he could, cause everyone attending was announced, on TV, and every human on earth would suddenly dye their hair blond, and he'd have to change his appearance again, maybe something with sunglasses this time. What the meetings were actually about wasn't announced, but reporters were always pushing for information.

He'd only decided to attend the meeting because Gary had needed the data for his research, Ash still had a rivalry with him but he'd lost at rock paper scissors, so it was his turn. And the only reason he was doing it was as a favor to the late Prof. Oak. Ash sighed. "He won't challenge me to a battle but he'll play rock paper scissors, and he cheated." Garys Alakazam had helped, in a game of rock paper scissors, over the phone, which is really really pathetic. But Gary hated attending meetings almost as much as Ash did. "At least the subject isn't just D.N.A, I heard that there'd be some stuff on team rocket…" He sighed.

"Pi, pi pika chaa!" warned pikachu, his ears twitching. "Thanks buddy." Ash whispered as a kid about ten walked along, chatting to his clearly brand new starter, a Squirtle. "Darn, I was almost out of the forest." Ash muttered under his breath.

"Hey mister!"

Ash looked up. "Yes?"

The kid and his Squirtle ran over. "Do you have any clue how to get out of here, I've been lost for three days, and my Bellsprout, I think she's really sick!" he said all of this really fast, and Ash had to ask him to repeat himself.

"Send out your Bellsprout, I may be able to help." The kid nodded. "Flower, come out." He said, holding up a pokeball. A red light flashed and a very sick looking Bellsprout materialized in front of Ash.

"Hmm, she looks pretty bad, this ought to help for now, but I suggest that you get to a Pokécenter right away." Ash said as he pulled a bottle of Full Heal and a Potion out of his pack, spraying them on the Pokémon.

"I would've by now but I can't find the exit to this place. Where are you going?" Ash smiled. "I was just leaving the forest, I was headed to Viridian City. I'll show you the way out, come on." He stood up and Pikachu climbed onto his shoulder.

The kid moaned "I just came from there, but I suppose it's better to get to a Pokécenter as fast as possible." Ash led the kid along, soon coming to a sign. "Viridian City \/ Viridian Forest /\." It said. Soon they found a road, they walked quickly to get to the City before sunset. "So what's your name?" asked the kid.

"My name's Shawn, yours?" Ash had been using this name for a while now, if he said his real name in a Pokécenter or store he had to make a daring escape towards the exit before people cornered him. He soon learned this after being attacked several times and decided that using a fake name was the best line of defense. All of the Nurse Joys were good at keeping his secret though.

"My name's Jimmy, and my Squirtles name is Aquos." They could see the city now, the Pokécenters red roof visible. "So why are you headed to Viridian?" asked Jimmy. "You're probably going to get the news on the meeting first hand, aren't you?"

Ash laughed. "Yeah, something like that."

Jimmy frowned. "Ya know, a lot of people said that Ash Ketchum's gonna be there. I don't really get it, his Pokémon are really strong and stuff, but I mean it's been ten years since he became a master. I honestly think people would've calmed down a bit by now." Jimmy looked over at Ash, clearly aiming his words at his appearance.

Ash laughed "Finally someone who agrees with me!" Pikachu shook his head "Chaa!"

"Whoops."

Jimmy looked at him skeptically. "There's no way that you're Ash."

Ash sighed and took out his pokedex and flipped it open, then pressed the trainer button. He hated it when people didn't believe him, and he figured that since this kid was sick of people freaking out about him it wouldn't be much of a problem. "This pokedex is property of Ash Ketchum, home town, Pallet." It said electronically.

"Well… now I'm not really sure how to react." Jimmy looked confused.

Ash laughed. "Aren't you gunna freak out?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't really much care who you are, but I do have a couple questions." They were in town now, nearing the Pokécenter.

"I'll tell ya what, I'm not suppose to be at the HQ until tomorrow, you go get your Bellsprout to Nurse Joy and I'll meet you in the centers motel."

Jimmy nodded. "Alright, I hope she's ok…" He and Ash walked in the sliding doors.

"Don't worry, Nurse Joy will know what to do. Right Pikachu?" pikachu nodded "Pi-pikachu!" they walked up to the counter.

"Hello, how may I help you?" asked Nurse Joy. "Hello, please take care of my Bellsprout, I think she's really sick." Said Jimmy nervously.

Nurse Joy took the Pokéball and set it in a small machine, looking at the reading with a troubled expression, then handed it to Chansey. "Please take her to the emergency room, you know what to do, I'll be there in a minuite." The Pokémon nodded and left. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

Ash nodded, "Do you have a place we can stay the night?"

Nurse Joy handed him a key. "Room twelve, like always."

"So, what's your first question?" Ash asked, hoping to calm Jimmy down. They were sitting across from each other on the beds, the motel window looked out towards the HQ.

Jimmy kept looking out it and wringing his hands. "I can't remember what I was gonna ask, I hope Flower's ok."

Ash looked over at him; he could understand why he was worried. "I'm sure that she'll be fine, Nurse Joy always knows what to do. If you don't mind, can I ask you some questions?"

Jimmy looked up at him. "Yeah I guess." then went back to staring out the window.

Ash smiled. "What are your goals as a trainer?"

Jimmy looked up surprised. "I'm not sure, I was gunna battle at the gyms, eventually. I honestly just want to go places, see things, and make friends. I want to learn new things, lots of new things… What are some of the things you've seen Ash. OH! And why did you lie about your name?" he was suddenly excited.

Ash laughed. "I would've thought that'd be obvious, as for things I've seen, you'll have to be more specific." They continued talking for about an hour, then decided to get some sleep.

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Rose woke up, she hopped down from the top bunk, Star and Bolt were waiting for her. "Ready to try plan A?"

She grimaced, "if plan A fails we probably won't be able to work out plan B." Star sighed and shook his head, then the bell rang. Soon after Kaylee walked in, alone again, as they'd been hoping. "Alright, we've decided to trust you, we have a plan to escape today. Oh, and if you betray us we'll kill you, okay?" said Rose.

Kaylee looked a little shocked, but soon regained her composition. "Well that was fast, so what's the plan?" she asked.

"Well, we really have three. The first is that we have you escort us out of here, pretending to take us somewhere, freeing morphs, if anyone gets suspicious tell them we've been sentenced to death, and if they prod more we run like hell, breaking out as many morphs as possible. The second is that I have bolt shock the crap out of me, and we pretend to take me to the hospital, dragging him along so he doesn't destroy anything else. I use this hyper potion, which I really really don't wanna know where you got it Bolt. Then we dress like rockets, and free as many morphs as possible before we're noticed. The third plan is that we raise all hell, set the base on fire, and as soon as everyone's free we run like hell." Rose finished.

"Isn't there a plan that doesn't involve getting caught and running like hell?" she asked.

They all laughed. "No, there isn't." Star managed to say.

"Well then I suppose I'll have to ride my Altaria out of here."

Bolt looked back and fourth from Rose to Star. "HEY!! How the heak am I suppose to get out of here, I can't fly!!?" they laughed.

"Don't worry, if Kaylee knows how to fly the cargo plane that brought me here no one will have to, well, technically we'll be flying, but no one will be outside." Star was excited, Rose could feel it, it was radiating off him.

"We're gunna do this when the rockets are supposedly weakest, after the others leave the fight room. It'll be much easier once we've freed some of the other morphs. So, Kaylee, can you fly a plane?" Rose questioned.

"Of course!" Kaylee laughed. "The Fiore Rangers would only send their best for a matter this important, I'm surprised that the Pokémon league is just now getting involved, apparently they didn't realize how huge this issue is."

Star yawned, "Well, if I'd waited for the league I'd be dead, I'm pretty sure that they have a few rockets slowing their progress though. So, which plan should we use?"

Kaylee listened as the bell excusing the rockets from the morphs rooms rang, suddenly the intercom came on. It spewed out a few jumbled words then there was a series of curses and thunks before it clicked off. "I honestly don't think setting the base on fire is a good idea, there are, well… there are things here that…" she just shook her head.

"The rockets have conducted experiments that can't leave, that'd die, haven't they?" Bolt whispered sadly.

Kaylee nodded. "The first plan isn't bad, but I'm not authorized to take you guys anywhere, so the RG would know right away." Rose looked at her. "RG? What's that?"

Bolt snorted. "RG stands for rocket guard, they have the strongest issue Pokémon, and are licensed to kill if they feel the need, they're basically evil security guards. They're usually I battle in the fight room."

Star looked over at Kaylee. "Speaking of the fight rooms, how many morphs are left?" She thought for a moment. "There's about one-hundred-thirty here, they moved some morphs to other bases, in the main Kanto base there's around seventy, in the Hoenn base there's around a hundred right now, but they're planning on moving some of them. They don't have a permanent Sinnoh base yet." She paused for a moment. "I think we should use plan two, it's the most believable, especially since Bolt's a loose cannon."

He looked at her murderously. "I'll give you a loose cannon." He growled, "I've got more control than these two, you want loose cannon look at her…" he muttered.

Rose glared at him, if looks could kill, he would've been mincemeat. "I'm gunna pretend you didn't say that, if using this plan is our best shot then we should go for it."

Kaylee nodded. "Bolt, I meant that the rockets think you're the most likely, no offense, to kill you're cellmates here. I honestly don't think you're stupid enough."

He laughed. "I think I'm starting to like you, so when do I get to freak out and try to 'kill' everyone?"

"I told the others that I'll take cell duty for the whole day, so anytime is fine. But I think that Rose decided that we were gunna do this after everyone's back from the fight room. So all we have to do now is wait." She said as the bell for the fight room rang.

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Mewtwo scanned the city, the war between the morphs and rockets was going to destroy everything if he didn't figure out how to stop it. He knew Ash couldn't stop it by himself, not like he'd stopped him and the clones. But he hoped he'd help, or at least inspire him. He knew it wasn't Arceus choice to have this war, but someone had to do something, or the rockets would win. It'd been about eighteen years since that first fight.

MewTwo sighed; Ash clearly wasn't in Jubilife City. Well, that covered Sinnoh and Hoenn, now he'd search Kanto and Johto. If Ash wasn't there he'd decided to search Fiore and Almia region and the Orange Islands… He jumped then looked up in surprise as the giant TV suddenly shouted Ash's name. "The final member of the Pokémon league attending meeting will be Ash Ketchum, tomorrow at eleven. Remember to watch Jubilife TV for live footage!!"

It then showed a picture of him. MewTwo almost fell over, "He dyed his hair……? Blond!" He almost laughed, except that he saw most of the crowd below suddenly stop and start muttering, he hadn't noticed, but at least one out of every ten people had dyed their hair black, and had Pokémon League hats on. MewTwo shook his head as he flew off towards Viridian City. He would shadow Ash until he could talk to him personally. He hoped it wasn't too late to stop this war, if he couldn't… he didn't even want to think about it.

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The bell rang. Rose looked up. "Star, Bolt… Kaylee, you ready?" Bolt smirked, Rose could tell that he was gunna clearly enjoy this. Star looked worried. She knew he hated this, if the positions were switched she would too. He'd switch places if he could, but the unfortunate fact is that he was a ground type.

"Lets do this!" Kaylee said excitedly. She ran into the hall and slammed the door as she shouted something like "Run for your lives!" the door poped back open, so everyone could watch. Rose got a good look at the other morphs in the hall, she hoped some would escape before they could be caged up.

"GAAHHHH! I HATE THIS!! FREAKIN GET THE HELL OUT OF MY CELL!!!" Bolt screamed. Then he shot electricity at Rose, she'd forgotten how much it hurt, and screamed as she felt it coarse through her body. Then she fell over, paralyzed. She watched Star smack Bolt with his tail, and punched him in the face; his palms were bleeding.

Bolt fell over, pretending to have been knocked out. Kaylee ran in with two other rockets, one handcuffed the "unconscious" Bolt, and the other helped pick him up. She felt herself being lifted by Star and Kaylee. They ran through the hall, Rose heard Star mutter. "Get the hell out of here while the rockets are still confused." Then all hell broke loose.

"SCREW THE UNIFORMS!!" she heard bolt yell then someone sprayed her with the hyper potion. She jumped up as soon as it started to take affect and noticed Bolt was out of his handcuffs.

"GREAT JOB ON FALLOWING THE PLAN." She yelled sarcastically as she kicked one of the rockets in the gut. "BOLT! YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO!"

He nodded as he took out a door. "MORPHS!! FALLOW ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!!"

Rose spotted Star, two rockets had stun guns on him. He laughed and spun, slamming one in the gut with his tail, he slammed his foot into the others head. Bolt ran out towards the airplane hanger, followed by Kaylee. The two rockets that'd been with her had communicators out, Rose listened while slamming a door open. "These are Rangers Jenny and Jacob, of Sinnoh base three, the mission has been completed, we're on to phase two." They said simultaneously. The rockets began to retreat, four more broke off from the group and started for the hanger. "Orange Rangers, on the double!" one of them shouted. Rose and Star ran towards the hanger, they'd managed to lock about thirty rockets in cells, most of the others were knocked out, Some were dead… Rose saw some morphs among them.

They were on the plane, all of the morphs fit; Kaylee had put it on autopilot for a while. "All rangers report!" she commanded.

"Orange Island Rangers, squad number four, base two, ranks eight and nine, Rangers Jessie, Becky, Mike and Rick, Reporting for duty!"

Kaylee nodded, then turned to the other two rangers. "Sinnoh snow Rangers Jenny and Jacob, squad number six, ranks seven and eight, base seven. We were instructed to get the morphs to Sinnoh, just outside Snowpoint City. Hail base is inside Dark woods, there's a huge clearing where you can land the plane."

Kaylee cleared her throat. "Good, I'm Ranger Kaylee, a Ringtown base one ranger, Rank ten, for this mission I went solo. We're on phase two of morph mission one, we'll land in hail base at twelve-hundred tomorrow, everyone get some sleep." Rose looked at all of the morphs, most of them had semiconsciously separated into groups, some were talking quietly, there were about twenty that sat alone.

She walked over to Star and sat next to him on the cargo holds floor. Bolt was talking to an Espeon morph; they walked over to Rose and Star after a few minuets. "This is Cella, she wants to join us, she's been tortured by the rockets. Apparently they're looking for an independent club run by her cousin. Cella has no clue what they were talking about but she knows that she needs to find him before they do."

She nodded, then sat down. "Before you object I'm at least level sixty, I've taken out dark types at least ten levels higher than me, I'm seventeen, so I'm old enough to take care of myself, and I promise that I'll keep up."

Star looked at her. "Well, I wasn't going to object, I've seen you battle, you're good. The choice is really Roses though, she's the leader."

She looked nervously over at Rose. "I don't object, but you're gunna have to show me that you can do this, show me what you can do, tomorrow, right now we should get some sleep."

Cella smiled, "Alright!! Tomorrow then!" They all decided to get some sleep then, the plane floor surprisingly more comfortable than the beds at rocket camp.

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"The Lost Club meeting is now in order, has everyone been accounted for?" the thirty-or-so ten to sixteen year-olds answered.

"ALL ACCOUNTED FOR!" The fourteen year-old Pikachu morph standing on the stage scanned the crowd. He couldn't believe that no one had given him away yet.

He also couldn't believe that this club had actually grown. "Is there any news on the others?" a bunch of hands raised.

"Yes, Trisha?" a girl about twelve stood up, he'd recognized her as one of the RAs, or a Ranger Apprentice.

"Tyler, I heard that Hail base was receiving rangers from a rank nine mission, I'm pretty sure that it's about some morphs. But I'm not sure it's your family." He nodded, Tylers family had been captured by team rocket two years ago, he'd gone fishing with his cousin and when they'd come back no one was there. Cella had been captured later, he'd managed to get away, and he hated himself for it. He'd wandered through the woods for a while and ran into Fortree City. The gym leader, an eighteen year old girl named Alexis found him and helped him. He'd been working to find his family ever since.

He'd formed a club; it mostly consisted of teenagers from broken families, or orphans who'd never had anyone else to look up to. Many of the kids joined because they hated team rocket; usually the reason for this hate was because they'd had family members and Pokémon tortured and/or killed by them. Most were just looking for a place to fit in and have a place where others would listen to them, where there was someone to look up to, or some sort of family to belong to, and a leader. Even though Tyler had found a family with the kids who'd joined his club he still missed his parents, his uncle, his cousins, and sisters… There were a few members who were RAs. They made his search much easier. But it was still hard. He'd gotten as much information on the rockets as possible, it still wasn't enough, and even the old stories didn't help.

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MewTwo flew over Goldenrod City, nearing his destination. A second later he felt a presence next to him. "Hello Mew." The pink kitten-like Pokémon was soon next to him.

"Hello Mewtwo, you found him?" he nodded.

"Apparently he's been called to a meeting at the Pokémon HQ. I'm planning on talking to him as soon as possible." Mew laughed. "What's so funny?" MewTwo asked.

"Every time you've seen him before you've been trying to avoid humans. I just find it sort of ironic that you'd go looking for one." MewTwo half smiled, Mew was right, it was sort of ironic.

They were nearing Silver Cave now. They flew on in silence for a while until they were just outside of Viridian City. "Let's just hope that there's some hope." Mewtwo sighed as Mew teleported.

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Pikachus ears twitched, then suddenly his eyes popped open. He got up and stretched, looking out the window, then suddenly a small pink form flew across the brightening sky. Pikachu looked over at Ash, then over to Jimmy, who was sitting at the end of his bed. "Hey Pikachu." He said in a tired voice. Ash rolled over and fell off the bed. "HEY! GAAAHH!" Jimmy laughed. Pikachu looked out the window just in time to see a flash of purple cross the sky.

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Thomas sat in front of his laptop, he looked over the records of the morphs, he stopped at one of the Charizards. Thomas looked over the file.

Pokemon: Charizard

Type: Fire

Gender: Female

Height: 5' 11"

Weight: 180 LBS

Eyes: Green

Skin: Pale orange

Hair: Dark Brown

Current area: (unknown)

Evolution status: Fully evolved

Status: Hunted. Presumed Dangerous. Traveling or stagnant with two or more Morphs.

Name: Rose and Fang

At the end of the profile was a new mark, it was labeled, Name: Rose and Fang. Thomas stared at this for a long time, he'd just added it yesterday. Then he snapped the computer shut and slid it into his bag. He slid the pack containing all of his clothes and anything else he could take with him onto his back. He snapped his Pokéball belt on; he hadn't worn it in a long time, it was a little tight.

Thomas then looked over at the photograph of Mewtwo. He broke the frame and put the picture in his pocket, with his resources he could've found the Pokémon easily, but he didn't want the other rockets involved in this. He sighed, they'd find out soon enough, he wasn't specifically betraying them, but he figured that meeting with a legendary Pokémon and not trying to capture or kill it would be the same in the others eyes.

Thomas left his office and stepped into the elevator across the hall. "Floor ten?" the rocket grunt inside asked. Thomas shook his head. "No, ground floor, I've been assigned an important mission, on foot." The elevator dinged at each floor, the doors finally opened and Thomas made his way towards the glass sliding doors. He felt a breeze as they opened into the cool night air.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

**What Next?**

Rose opened her eyes, jumped up, and immediately took a defensive position, then she remembered where she was and sat back down. She took a deep breath and looked around her; almost everyone was still asleep. Someone was up, looking out the window. "Cella?" Rose asked.

The figure at the window answered without turning around. "Hello, Rose did I wake you?"

She shook her head. "No, why are you up?"

Cella turned around. "I don't usually need much sleep, and I was thinking."

Rose walked over to her; they both looked out the window, the clear sky rushing by, just turning red with the rising sun. "About what?"

Cella looked thoughtful. "I was just thinking about that old story, you know the one about the Pokémon named MewTwo? I was thinking about how he was created, you know? My grandma wasn't created to differently. Did you ever wonder why team rocket made us, I mean seriously, it seems like we were made just to be destroyed."

Rose looked at her, abandoning the view the sunrise out the window they sat down. "My mom told me that we were somehow connected to that story, but no one could ever figure out how… It seems like forever ago, when I was taken." Rose looked over at Star, then back at Cella. It had only been about a month, but it felt like years.

"Yeah, it does. My cousin and me were best friends. We always had each others back, he's like a brother to me. I really hope I can find him."

Rose nodded "Don't worry, we'll find him." they sat for a moment.

"Hey, Rose? How am I supposed to show you what I can do, once the plane lands?"

Rose looked at her, slightly confused. "We're going to have a battle."

Cella looked stunned. "A battle? Why?" now she seemed scared.

"Haven't you ever had a battle outside of that base, like for fun or something?"

Cella shook her head. "No, I've never battled before this… why?"

Rose was surprised. "How'd you get to level seventy then?"

Cella thought for a moment. "I'm not sure. The only thing I did where I lived that could possibly help me level up was go fishing with my cousin, and we didn't even battle them. I'd catch the fish, and he'd electrocute them. Every now and then we'd have to battle a Gyarados or Carvanha, but he usually did most of the work."

Rose smiled. "Maybe you're just strong, I guess." They examined the room; they weren't the only ones up now. Some of the morphs were talking quietly among themselves; she spotted Star, still asleep, but where was Bolt?

Cella heard quiet footsteps behind her. "Bolt? I wouldn't stand that close to Roses tail if I were you." She growled.

"Darn it! How'd you know it was me? Do you have eyes in the back of your head?"

Cella laughed. "I couldn't see you, but I could hear your footsteps, and smell you. Even for a morph my senses are higher than normal, you could've been a mile away and I would've known where you were."

He rolled his eyes "Great, I guess anything ever scaring you in out of the question. I'm gonna wake up Star." He ran over to Star, got really close to his face and yelled "WAKE UP!!" before Rose could stop him.

As a result, he was punched in the face, which resulted in a bloody nose. "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!" Star shouted. "WE JUST GOT OUT OF THAT FREAKING HELLHOLE, AND YOU THINK IT'S A [I]GOOD[/I] IDEA TO SCARE THE CRAP OUT OF ME!!?"

Cella was on the floor of the plane, laughing her head off. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself down. "Does anyone here know heal-bell?" she began to giggle again. "Or better yet, is anyone here morphed with a Chansey? I think he broke Bolts nose." One of the Orange Rangers sent out a Blissey as Cella completely lost it.

"Umm, your name's Bolt, right?" He asked. Bolt nodded, blood was beginning to seep through his fingers. The pink Pokémon told him to lean his head back while she ran to the front of the plane to get the first aid kit.

"Ro, roo hash a Brissy ruh? Dits fretty rar id it?" he mumbled through his fingers.

The Ranger laughed. "Yep, she's been my best friend ever since we met, I was nine. I'd just moved to the Orange Islands with my father, she was a Happiny. I was walking on the beach looking for tide pools when I noticed a little pink form. I walked over to investigate; there she was, hiding behind some rocks. I ran home and grabbed a towel; I wrapped her in it and took her home. We've been together ever since."

The Blissey came back with the planes meager medical supplies and began examining Bolts nose. "Me and Rick have been together for almost before I can remember!" she said happily in the language of Pokémon. "You're nose will be fine, but I suggest that you refrain from startling people who are sleeping."

Bolt growled. "Speaking of which, Star? Sorry about that." He laughed "I think you need to relax a little, how about a battle to calm some nerves?"

Star looked around. "Sure, but how about after the plane lands. Hey!! I know!! Why don't we have a double battle? Rose and Cella verses you and I, that way she can show us how strong she is and we can all cool off!"

Rose shrugged "sounds good to me. Cella?"

She nodded "sure, sounds fun. Hey, speaking of landing, how long until we're at the base?"

Rick looked at his watch. "about three hours." His Blissey looked around the room and began fussing over everyone and started insisting that they all form a line so that she could give them a check up.

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"DAMMIT! Where. Is. Thomas?" shouted Giovanni. A grunt was escorted into the room.

"Umm s s sir? He said that he was on a mission. One appointed by you sir." The young man stuttered, he'd never actually seen Giovanni, and seeing his boss angry was at the top of his "never wanted to do" list.

Suddenly another rocket stumbled into the office, her uniform had holes in it, her arms slashed up. "Giovanni!! The morphs from Johto base 2 have escaped!! We we…" she feinted.

Giovanni called some rockets to get the feinted one to the hospital. Then he picked up his phone; he had business to attend to, and a traitor to find.

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Thomas stood in the forest, just out of sight from the giant crowd standing outside of the Pokémon league, this was his best shot, if he could get inside he could completely expose team rocket. Since he was basically betraying them anyway he figured that he might as well do it thoroughly. Unfortunately, there was little chance of him getting inside, and the chance there was had him ending up in jail if he failed, that didn't matter anyway, as soon as he told the league how he'd gotten the info he'd be rotting away there anyway.

He took a deep breath and sent out his Skarmory. He stretched his green razor sharp wings, his bronze body glimmered in the sunlight. "SKARRRRMM SKAR!!" it screeched.

"Thomas smiled "Hello old friend, it's been a while hasn't it?" he hopped onto the Pokémons back and they flew to the back of the HQ. Any self-respecting rocket knew about the secret entrance in the back of the building, there was just one problem, the password had been changed so frequently in the past two months that no one but those attending the meeting knew it. He'd almost given up, then his ticket in showed up. Unfortunately, that ticket was one of team rockets worst enemies. Thomas had no clue what to do; unfortunately, if he didn't say something soon he'd be fried scientist on a stick, or probably worse.

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Pikachu, sitting on Ashes shoulder, and Jimmy walked out of the room. "Lets grab some breakfast, I'm starving!!" said Ash as his stomach grumbled.

Jimmy walked up to nurse Joy. "Is Flower okay?" he asked urgently.

Nurse Joy handed him a pokeball "yes, she should be fine now. But take it easy on her, she's still weak."

Jimmy nodded "of course, thank you so much!" He ran over to the breakfast bar and grabbed a bagel, then he grabbed some Pokémon food for Aquos and Flower. He sat at one of the tables and sent his Pokémon out.

"Hey, are you guys hungry?" the Pokémon nodded, Jimmy took out two small bowls from his pack and put the food in them, then he gave it to his Pokémon. Ash sat down next to him.

No sooner had they started eating though, than the TV across the room blared out news about the HQ meeting, and Ashes name, and picture. "LOOK, HE'S OVER THERE!!" shouted a trainer.

"And now it's time to go, come on, I suggest you fallow me if you don't want to get trampled" said Ash as he pulled Jimmy out of his chair.

"Aquos, Flower! Return!" he said while holding out two pokeballs.

They ran outside "Charizard! We need a lift!" Ash called as he threw a pokeball into the air. Ash hopped on the flying Pokémons back and suddenly Jimmy felt himself being lifted into the air by a pair of arms.

They were soon high up in the air, far away from the mob who'd been at the pokécenter. "So, umm, are we gunna land any time soon?" Jimmy asked.

"Yeah, just a couple of minuets. I'm going to take the back entrance into the HQ. The only way you can get there is by flight. Unfortunately you can only enter, so I have to leave through the front entrance." They spotted the building.

"So, why did you take me with you?"

Ash thought for a minute. "I honestly have no clue." They landed and quickly noticed that they weren't alone. "Who are you?"

Pikachu hopped down from Charizard and growled. "Chuuuuuuuu" electricity crackled in his cheeks. Ash hopped down from his Pokémons back and repeated the question.

"My name is Thomas. I have vital information about team rocket." He said calmly, even though his nerves were tearing him apart.

"It looks like you [I]work[/I] for team rocket to me, especially since there's a bright red R on your shoulder." Said Jimmy.

"Okay then, let me rephrase. I USED to work for team rocket, but now I'm trying to find a way to completely expose and stop them." Pikachus cheeks started to crackle with even more electricity. "And it's not really my fault that they stole all of my clothes in the middle of the night and _decorated_ them."

Ash looked at him skeptically. "What kind of information?" he asked.

"Most anything you could possibly want, and everything on the Pokémorphs." Said Thomas. "I was the head scientist."

Pikachu was still crackling with electricity, but looked a little calmer. Jimmy was completely confused. "Pokémorphs? What are you talking about?" he asked.

Thomas looked over at him. "Basically what you get when human and Pokémon DNA is mixed. There's a few other things, but that's the basis of it."

Ash held up Charizards pokeball. "Return." He said. The red beam pulled him back into the pokeball. "I believe that you just bought your ticket into this building, and I you'd better answer all questions asked with the truth." Ash pressed the buttons on the keypad. "6-3-3-0-4-0-5-1-9-6" he murmured under his breath as he punched in the code.

"A ten digit code? That's a bit much don't you think?" Asked Jimmy as the door clicked open. "You and me both. I hope they have food at the meeting, I'm starving!" Pikachu hopped up onto Ashes shoulder as they walked into the building.

*************************************************************

MewTwo stood in a tree, the wind blew and ruffled his fur slightly. He watched as Ash, the child, and the rocket walked into the building. Something was very familiar about the rocket, something unsettlingly familiar. He suddenly felt a presence next to him. "Hello Mew, I found him, unfortunately he's traveling with some kid, so I haven't had a chance to speak with him yet."

The tiny pink Pokémon created a pink bubble and sat on it. "I have some bad news."

MewTwo turned his head and looked at him. "Yes?" he questioned. "The war, it is unavoidable, but there is also good news."

MewTwo sighed. "The good news?"

Mew popped the bubble. "The good news is that complete destruction is avoidable, but we have to figure out how, I have a good idea, but it'll be difficult." He said, his long thin tail twisting in the air. "That's not exactly helpful, but we might be able to figure out how to stop it if Celebi could give us any information, and if we can find him."

MewTwo looked over at the small pink cat who used to be his rival, that seemed like forever ago. It seemed odd that MewTwo, who had been so bent on destroying the world before, even though that was years ago, was now working so hard to save it.

***********************************************************

The meeting had just begun when the three people walked in. "So good of you to join us Ash, who are the two people accompanying you?" asked Drake, the dragon master. His hair was beginning to change to a gleaming silver.

"Sorry I'm late, this is Jimmy, he's a beginning trainer, and this is Thomas, he has info on the Pokémorphs, a LOT of info on the Pokémorphs. Hey, is there any food around here, I'm starving!"

Richie pushed a bowl of fruit across the table. "Hey Ash, long time no see, how's it goin?" he asked.

"Hey Richie! I'm alright, how's the Gym? Hey! Wait a minute, where's Sparky?"

Richie frowned grimly, "That's why I'm here, he disappeared two weeks ago. I think it was team rocket." Pikachu hopped down from Ashes shoulder onto the table and sniffed Richie's jacket.

"_Sparky is missing?_" he thought to himself. [I]"_It had to have been team rocket, but where would they take him? Could it have been…no, no one's seen [B]__**them[/B/**__ for years. _"[/I]

One of the people at the meeting cleared their throat. "I believe that we should be getting onto business, Ash? You said that this man has information on the Pokémorphs? What kind of information?" Asked Brandon, one of the frontier brains.

Thomas stepped forward. "Almost anything you could possibly want to know. I also have information on the other activities of team rocket."

A Pokémon ranger stood up from his chair and walked over to him. Ash recognized him as ranger Jackie. "Jackie!? What brings you all the way out here?" he asked.

"Hello Ash, what brings me here is the morphs. One of my teammates is bringing a cargo plane full of them to one of the Sinnoh bases. And this is the man who created them."

*********************************************************

The plane landed on a field of snow, there were twelve rangers waiting to meet them. "Welcome to Hail base, please fallow me." Said a woman. She led them into the building and showed them around, there were about eighty rooms. Many of the morphs were nervous as they were shown where to sleep, but soon realized that they were free to move about as they pleased. There weren't enough rooms for everyone to have their own so some of them decided that they'd like to sleep outside or share a room with some of their friends and families. Rose, Star, Bolt, and Cella were led to a larger room that had four beds on request like some of the others had.

"Well, this is a nice change, everything's clean and neat, and we're allowed to go outside or eat whenever we want to!" Celebrated Cella.

"YEAH!" Bolt punched the air. "I can finally touch snow and battle wild Pokémon, I can see trees and earth and rocks!!" He was crackling with excitement.

"Umm, haven't you ever seen a tree before? Or a rock? They're kinda everywhere." Asked Star.

"NO! if you'd been in the same place for seventeen years you wouldent've either." He growled.

"You've been with the rockets your whole life?" asked Rose.

Bolt flopped down onto one of the beds. "Yeah, I was the last morph they created. Which means no outdoors or fresh air, the only plants I ever saw were potted."

Star looked at him shocked. "So you've had no contact with the outside world for seventeen years!? No social life at all!" he sat down on one of the beds. "And I thought my life was hell, at least I know what it's like outside." He muttered.

Cella yawned, grabbed some of the blankets off of her bed and made a nest in the corner. "I evolved while almost getting eaten by a Gyarados, if that counts for anything." She offered.

Rose looked at them all, then got irritated. "ALRIGHT!!" she said loudly, making them jump. "I don't know the whole of what all of you've been through, but I'm sick of your moping already. So tomorrow I'm going to get up, eat breakfast, and start over!" she stretched her hands behind her head. "I'm going to begin the day like I belong in this world, weather or not you choose to! Tomorrow I'm hopefully going to have a battle with some very close friends of mine, then I'm going to find a map of Sinnoh, and figure out where the hell I'm supposed to go from here!"

They looked at her, then Star smiled. "You're right, we have no right to complain about what's happened before, this is right now!"

Cella purred "I should be trying to find Tyler instead of just sitting around!"

Bolt yawned. "Hmmm, well, It's worth a shot."

Rose was pleased. "Good! Now I'm starving, we should find some food." They laughed as they left the room.

*******************************************************

Tyler sat in one of the chairs in his secret base. The one they'd been using for meetings. He'd heard that an entire base of morphs had escaped, and that Cella had been there. Thing were going well, unfortunately some rockets had found the base during a meeting. Unfortunate for the rockets.

Four of them were tied up and chained to one of the walls. Tyler took a deep breath and walked over to them, and removed a gag from one of their mouths. The rocket glared at him, clearly holding back tears. He was no older than Tyler was, maybe a few months younger. The others were still asleep, one looked dead. Tyler shook his head back and forth, then sat down in front of him. "This isn't right, it's just plain wrong. How is it possible for the two of us, the same age, still considered children, to be killing each other?"

The young rocket hung his head and mumbled something. "What?" asked Tyler.

"I know it's wrong, it's horrible and cruel and violent. But we're so much the same. I've been thinking about it, a lot actually, you know what I think?"

Tyler shook his head. "What do you think?" The boy smiled. "I think that we were both torn from our families, I think that we both became part of a group so that we'd feel that we had a family again. I think that we've both been forced into a war that neither of want a part of, I think we both miss our parents and families. And I think that I'm dreaming." The boy frowned.

"You think that you're dreaming? Why?" asked Tyler.

"I think I'm dreaming because I'm having a conversation with someone who just tied me up."

Tyler shook his head. "You're not dreaming. And you know why you're tied up. I honestly don't want to fight, I could untie you, but I don't trust you."

The boy smirked. "Yeah, I figured it was something like that. This is odd, but even though we're supposed to be enemies, I don't hate you."

Tyler laughed. "How could we possibly hate each other? We don't even have a clue what the other is like!" He said.

"Good point, why don't we start now, my name's Michal." Tyler grinned.

"I'm Tyler, nice to meet you, Michal." He untied him and shook his hand.


	9. Chapter 9

Okay, the reason this is in bold is because it's specifically related to Bolt, it turns back to normal after the dream and after the legendaries are gone. What is in bold was origanall going to be a seperat chapter, but i changed my mind, so here you go, chapter nine, where a whole bunch of insane crap happens, or happened, sorta.

Chapter Nine

**Day one of freedom**

**Bolt lay awake; he listened to his friends' snores. Tomorrow it was time to stop living in the past, he wasn't sure if he could do that. He would've joined his friends and slept by now, but he didn't need to. It would just hurt him anyway. He'd had the same dream every night he'd slept for the past three years, it didn't seem to matter weather or not he slept, he always had that unpleasant memory to hold onto, he couldn't let it go.**

**He felt his eyelids close, he could've stopped it, but he didn't want to. It was his last memory of her. The good and the bad couldn't be separated; they were too closely intertwined. He felt it as he sank into unconsciousness, then the dream happened. The exact same, like someone had made a movie of the beginning of hell. **

**////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////**

**Bolt was fourteen, he'd just evolved into a Luxio, he finished tying on his boots and walked down the hall to Thomas lab. He knew that he'd been created in one of the giant tubes that were along the wall, but he didn't care, it was still his birthday. Inside he met Tilla Fire Paw. Today was her birthday too, but they weren't related. They'd been born on the same day, and they lived in the same facility, but they weren't brother and sister.**

**Thomas walked in fifteen minutes later, in his hands he had four brightly wrapped boxes. "Alright!! Presents!!" Tilla shouted, her excitement and surprise shown by how the fire on her back and head flared up. Bolt smiled, his best friend had just evolved too, from a Cyndaquil morph into a Quilava. Her body seemed thinner, and her brown and tan fur seemed to shine more than usual. His heart picked up speed, his usual reaction when he saw her.**

**He walked over to the table the gifts had been placed on, picked up a box and shook it. His smile got wider as he guessed what was inside. "NO WAY!! You really got me a skateboard!?" he tore the paper off and examined the box, then he sliced it open with his claws. He placed the board on the floor and was about to skate across the room.**

"**Hey now! No skateboards in the lab, we can try it out in the lounge later, okay?" Thomas said.**

"**Alright, later then." He ran back over to Tilla. "What did you get Tilla!?"**

**She beamed and held up a giant book, on the cover it had colorful pictures of food and said recipes. "I can't wait, I'm going to cook everything, I'm gunna make spaghetti, and smoothies, and shish kabobs, and everything!!" That was Tillas specialty, cooking. She'd loved making food for others to enjoy. She didn't have a single bone in her body that could've harmed anyone, and Bolt loved her. **

**He wanted to tell her, but he couldn't. He was afraid that if she didn't love him it would ruin their friendship. "Lets open our other presents!" he shouted, crackling with electricity.**

"**Hey now! Be careful! Don't shock me!"**

**Bolt laughed "Don't worry! You know I'm careful!" The truth was that he was more than careful, the truth was that he'd been practicing controlling his electricity ever since he'd met Tilla. Every day he'd shot at targets, he was so accurate now that he could hit a square inch target from Twenty feet away, at least. He could control it so well now that he could make sparks dance around her and she wouldn't get hit by even one of them, but he'd never be as stupid as to try it.**

**Hers was a set of kitchen utensils, knifes, pots, pans, spoons, bowls, and many other items were displayed on the large box. Tilla looked like she was going to explode with joy. Bolt opened his small box, inside of it was a note that said, "Look in your room." He looked up questioningly, then raced Tilla to his room. Inside there were several plants, it was almost like a forest. Bolt had loved plants, but he hadn't ever actually seen one outside of pictures before.**

**Neither had Tilla, they both walked around the small jungle for about half an hour. "I'm hungry, I wonder if there are any fruit trees?" Tillas stomach grumbled.**

"**Come over here!" shouted Bolt, She ran over, there was a small group of trees with fruit on them.**

"**Wow, wanna eat some?" Bolt smiled. "DEFINATALLY!!" he threw her an oran berry and grabbed one himself.**

"**I wonder if I could use some of these in cooking, what do you think ThunderBolts?" She was the only one allowed to call him that, ever. If anyone but Tilla ever did call him that they were pretty much electrocuted-dead.**

**Bolts eyes began to water as he bit into a large red somewhat spiky berry. He swallowed hard and looked around frantically. "Just don't EVER use those!!! GAH! I need a glass of water!"**

**Tilla laughed and threw a nomel berry at him. "Here, spicy foods are neutralized by citrus foods, that should help." **

**He stuffed the fruit into his mouth and immediately felt better, he took a deep breath. "Wow, how do you know these things?" **

**She laughed again, the sound the sweetest music, and grabbed a dark blue berry next to her. "I learned most of them while cooking, and the reason I knew that you should eat that one was because they're kept in the fridge. I have no clue what this one is though." She took a bite of it then grinned at Bolt.**

**He instantly started laughing. She frowned "What's so funny?"**

**He grabbed one of the berries and took a bite, then grinned at her. "Your mouth turned black!!" They both were rolling on the floor with laughter, Bolt stopped and watched her, her dark brown hair in complete disarray, his heart was beating faster than ever, he wanted to kiss her, to hold her in his arms and feel her soft fur under his fingers.**

**Suddenly Bolt felt himself being moved. It felt weird, like he was floating, and being pulled. It was like his body had suddenly become formless. He looked around, searching urgently for Tilla. He struggled against the pulling, he tore at the invisible trap, he screamed out. "TILLA! WHERE ARE YOU!!!" **

**////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////**

**Bolt watched in his dream as the rockets captured them in Release balls. It had been horrible, being in it and having no clue where he was, or where she was. He watched a man in a suit and tie walk up to the two rockets. "Good, I was worried that the balls wouldn't work, but it looks like they do have enough Pokémon in them."**

**The door in the room slammed open and Thomas ran in. "NO! Giovanni!! "I THOUGHT WE HAD AN AGREEMENT!!" he screamed. **

"**Not anymore, you haven't made any progress on the Articuno morph, there isn't even a single shred of spliced DNA, let alone the whole morph. And last night it escaped, so we're taking them, oh, and happy birthday, Thomas, so sad that this had to happen on all three of yours." The group walked out of the room, leaving Thomas behind.**

"**NO! NO NO NO NO NO NO NOOO!!!" he slammed his fist into the wall with each no, it began to bleed, he knocked several plants in the room over, the pots smashing. Thomas leaned against the wall and slid down it, he grabbed his face in his hands, tears and blood mixing together. **

**////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////**

**Bolt slammed against the invisible wall several times, he shot electricity at it, he tore at it with his claws until his hands were bloody. He knew he was moving, he had no concept of time or where he was but he knew he was moving. "Are you done yet? You're starting to give me a headache." **

**Bolt looked to his right and saw a Furret staring at him. "Who are you, and what are you?" he asked, his voice hoarse from screaming.**

"**I was going to ask the same, I'm a Furret, just call me Furret, everyone else does. Now who, and what are you?"**

**Bolt heard another voice to his left. "Hey Furret, is it a Newbie?" the voice sounded amused. A Quilava suddenly came into view.**

**Bolt looked at the oddly colored Pokémon that looked creepily like his best friend. "You're a Quilava!?"**

**The Pokémon smirked "you catch on quick, what's you're name, and what Pokémon are you?" Bolt shook his head "I'm only part Pokémon, Luxio. my name's Bolt, I'm a Pokémorph. Oh, and what's wrong with you're color?"**

**The greenish black Pokémon turned in a circle, trying to get a look at his fur. "I don't know what you're talking about, my color's the same as it was this morning!" he growled.**

"**But my friend is a Quilava morph and she's brown!" **

**The Pokémon looked thoughtful for a moment then shook his head. "You're friend was probably a shiny Pokémon, or Pokémorph or whatever. And if it was possible to break out of that pokeball you're in you would've by now, so stop fighting. You aren't going to stay in that for very long anyway, that wasn't the mission. They're going to leave you locked in a room somewhere, that's what they do to all of the morphs." Bolt shook his head, he had no clue what the hell was going on. He was suddenly exhausted, his eyes drooped and he fell asleep. **

**This part of the dream was always weird for Bolt, watching himself sleep. It was strange to see how weak he looked, lying on his side, his breath coming in slowly. He was suddenly aware that he didn't have to stay watching himself. He smacked his head, he would watch her as long as he could. He wasn't sure if he was walking or floating, but he knew he was moving. He was suddenly out in the hall, watching the two rockets that'd captured them, then he went to Tillas pokeball. The sphere was a burnt orange color, on the top there were three lines parallel to each other, they were black, the bottom was white, with a black stripe coming from the button and ending at the hinge. Bolt had never really gotten a good look at the release balls, it was a pokeball specifically designed to always capture the Pokémon, like a master ball. Instead of capturing the Pokémon forever though, the person with it could only release the Pokémon after catching it, useless unless you didn't actually want to keep the pokemon. They were sometimes used by rangers who didn't have time to use a capture styler in certain situations. **

**Bolt went inside the ball, he looked at her, her soft brown fur moving lightly as she slept, her soft breathing making it shimmer, he sat next to her, not really there, and ran his fingers through her hair. The worst part of a dream, that you can't truely touch anything. He felt a tear roll down his cheek. "No" he wiped it away, he would not cry, he never cried, ever.**

**///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////**

**Celebi flew through dark woods, the forest just outside of the ranger base where Bolt and the others slept. He felt the pull of time, like a magnet. He shook his head, there shouldn't have been a warp there. Celebi flew towards the pull, and sighed with frustration as he neared a building. "I hate it when humans try to mess with time, they don't understand the consequences, the pain." He opened the window and immediately felt another Pokémon, the one that dark woods were named for. "Darkrai? Why are you here?"**

**He slowly turned and looked at him. "I sensed a dream, an odd one, like a nightmare with hope, it's very interesting." Celebi quickly sensed another Pokémon, a light shimmered and Cresselia appeared.**

"**Darkrai! What are you doing to this… this? Is that a Pokémon or a person?" **

**Celebi sighed. "Hello Cresselia, this is the topic of the last twenty-eight meetings we've missed. They're called Pokémorphs, why are you here?"**

**She looked at Darkrai glaringly. "I was on my way to one of the meetings, finally, when I felt him nearby, so I decided to make sure the dream was alright. What are you doing here?" **

**A cold breeze flew through the window, Celebi quickly shut it. "I felt some sort of time warp, it was really weird, as if it was and wasn't real at the same time. And Cresselia, you know he doesn't do that on purpose!"**

**Cresselia turned toward Celebi, "says you!" **

**Darkrai shook his head, he closely examined Bolt. "Celebi, he's dreaming about the past, but is in the past. I've never experienced this sort of thing before. It's like his past and present are sharing the same place." Darkrai looked concerned. "The only reason I even really sensed this is because the dream is apparently unpleasant, but he knows he's dreaming. So, why doesn't he wake up? It's not because I'm here, he knows how to wake up, but is enduring this anyway."**

**Cresselia shook her head. "how don't you know that the dream wasn't caused by you? It seems suspicious to me!" **

**Darkrai turned to her. "I'm sorry that you don't believe me, but I think you should have a good look at this, it's nothing any of my abilities are able to create."**

**Celebi suddenly jumped. "Hurry up if you're going to do it, something just changed!" The shadow Pokémon nodded, then a light flashed and they were inside the dream. "Do not do anything, just watch." Darkrai warned.**

**/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////**

**Bolt knew what was coming next, he and Tilla were released into the same room he'd been in for the past three years. Bolt watched as she cried, watched as he places an arm around her trembling form and held her close. He hated this part, it hurt so bad to see her cry. It felt like someone was stabbing him in the heart over and over again.**

**The room blurred, the dream was moving forward, it stopped at the fight room. The glass in the room at that time was only four inches thick, most of the Pokémorphs in the room didn't bother trying to escape, there were even a few who looked like they enjoyed the battles. Bolt felt a presence other than himself in the dream, but he couldn't place it. It didn't matter anyway, the only thing they'd see is the broken, horrible, bloody past of someone who'd never be able to forget it. **

**His fight began, he had no clue what he was doing, but the Pokémon attacked him so he attacked back. It was as simple as that. It was a large bird Pokémon, it had steel blue eyes, and every now and then it would cry out, "Pipiiiigggoo" but weirdly enough He'd understood every word it'd said. The Pokémon feinted with a few electric shocks.**

**Then he scanned the room for her. Bolt hated this part, but it was the last look he'd get at her, until he dreamed again. He scanned the room, both of him did. Then she was spotted, she had a deep cut on her side. The Croconaw she was faced against shot a vortex of water at her. Bolt pounded on the glass and shouted at her to fight. Tears were forming in his eyes, he pounded harder, yelled louder. Her sodden form couldn't move, she was breathing hard. He screamed and shattered the first wall of glass, he ran towards her, the Pokémon about to kill her looked up at his advancing form. He slammed into the wall, smashing it completely, shattered glass showered down on the everything.**

**Bolts fist made contact with the crocodile-like Pokémons head, he felt it fracture, felt it's and his own blood cover his fist, but didn't care. He knelt down beside her, she wasn't moving. She was limp, her soft brown fur soaked and bloody. He held her body to himself, it hurt like someone had just taken a razorblade to his soul. "No..NOOO oh god no. oh god no Tilla, Tilla Tilla Tilla. Tilla……. Don't be dead. Please, I love you." It was the first and time he'd ever said it to her. To anyone.**

**He felt his form shift, There was a soft light, he couldn't move, then it stopped. His head was pounding but he didn't care, all he could do was hold her. Then they tore her limp form from his arms, and he feinted.**

**There was no point to the dream to Bolt after that, but it would just be stupid to wake up because it was so close to over, like stopping a movie at the end. He was in the cell, he couldn't move, so in shock. From the evolution, from what the rockets do, from the horror of what he'd seen. From her death. Her death, her death, her death, her death. She's dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. It kept playing over and over again in his head, like some twisted broken record.**

**Then someone walked into the room. "Bolt? God, I'm so sorry." It was Thomas.**

**He looked angrily at him, "Why did you make us?"**

**Thomas looked shocked. "What?"**

**Bolt growled. "She's dead, because of the rockets, because of what you are. WHY THE HELL AM I HERE! WHAT DID WE DO! What did she do? I hate you. Go away, get away. I hate you, I hate what you are. You're no better than any of the others. Go. Ay. Way. Get the hell out." He screamed, he even tore off a piece of the bed and threw it at him. That was the last time Bolt had ever seen Thomas. That was the last time he'd ever cried. Ever. **

**////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////**

**The three legendaries watched the dream, and they saw something Bolt had never noticed. They saw her, in his blood soaked arms as he evolved, murmer so quietly that it was no wonder Bolt had never heard it. "Me too."**

**Cresselia was crying, she knew that nothing Darkrai could do would ever create something like this, sure the nightmares he created were horrid, but the things that happened in this one were just pure evil.**

**They left the dream, Darkrai was shocked. "They're so, so, they're so human! Did you watch that? The way he protected her? I didn't know that anything could be so strong, so overpowering! But he's in so much pain."**

**Celebi had his eyes shut. "No wonder he hates the rockets so much more than the others. Each one has a reason, but the fury, the deep resentment. And he doesn't even know that she lived. Cresselia? Is there a way to stop him from having this dream again?"**

**She shook her head. "No, There is, but he has to be willing to let go. When we were inside the dream he wasn't trying to get rid of it, it seemed like he welcomed it. I don't know why anyone would ever want to dream something so horrible though!" **

**Darkrai sighed. "He doesn't see it as completely horrible, it's the only way he can hold on to the memory of someone whom he deeply loved. It's a bittersweet memory, a perfect bittersweet dream of the past, and it is killing him, in the most literal sense." Cella stirred in the corner.**

"**Let's go, before we're seen." Said Celebi as he opened the window. They left silently, Darkrai melted with the shadows, Celebi silently flew off, and Cresselia followed the soft moonbeams into the night**.

*************************************************************

Cella stood at the window, she'd been there for about two hours, and the sun was beginning to rise. Then she heard Bolt stir and looked at him.

He opened his eyes. "Hey Cella, why are you up so early?"

She smiled. "I always get up really early, I don't really ever need much sleep. Why are you up?"

Bolt shook his head. "I would never sleep, I don't need any really. It's just out of habit that I do." He half lied.

The sun was about halfway up. "So you just get up every morning and watch the sunrise?"

She took a deep breath. "I just seem to be drawn to it, I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with me being an Espeon morph, but still…….." She paused. "So, you don't ever actually need any sleep? Then why do you bother? You said it was out of habit, but why sleep when you could be doing so many other things?"

Bolt sat on his bed. "I suppose I like to dream." Bolt was glad that he didn't have to say why as they heard a yawn from the bed above Bolts.

"Thank God, finally a good morning. It's good to wake up with friends around…" Star jumped down from the bunk. "So, what should we eat for breakfast?" he yawned again.

"I don't know, why don't we wait for Rose to get up?" asked Cella.

"Good idea, so why are you up so early?"

Bolt laughed quietly. "You're up a little early yourself. I don't ever need sleep, I just like to." He said.

Cella smiled. "I get up every morning and watch the sunrise. Why are you up?"

Star stretched his wings, the air in the room was cool, but not cold, it felt good as he took a deep breath. "Out of habit, I've spent most of my life running from the rockets, so getting up early and moving quick was a necessity."

The sun was just above the trees when Rose woke up. "Good morning, wow, everyone is up already?" she mumbled. "Did any of you actually sleep?" They all laughed as she got off the top bunk.

They walked out into the hall and took a left, towards the main part of the ranger base. They walked out into a large room where some people were talking on phones, checking things on laptops, and sipping coffee. There were morphs talking to rangers, some of them even had coffee themselves. There was a wide window that showed the scenery outside. The sun had fully risen now, and the snow was sparkling. The trees outside were covered in frost, the green needles glittering like tiny emeralds. Icicles were hanging from the roof, they looked like crystal stalactites.

Suddenly one of the rangers pagers went off, she jumped up and checked it, then ran out the door and threw a pokeball into the air. A Rapidash burst out of the pokeball in a hurricane of flowers, which were set on fire, then disappeared. The girl hopped on its back and raced into the forest just to the left of the base, several other rangers did the same, sending their Pokémon out, and suddenly the whole base was buzzing. The part of the forest the rangers had run to seemed darker, and slightly more ominous than the rest of the woods around it.

"What just happened?" Rose asked one of the rangers.

He turned to her and smiled. "Don't worry, we sent some rangers on patrol and they must be having some trouble in Dark Woods. It happens all the time, it's usually poachers or some anti dark type wackos."

Cella looked out towards the forest, "So why would anyone want to kill dark types anyway, they're just Pokémon, I mean, I'm a psychic type and I'm not really fond of them, but still…"

The ranger shook his head. "It's the unfortunate label. Many people see dark type Pokémon as evil or as demons. It's just because they don't understand them. I'm a fan of dark types though, and I have to go." The ranger threw out a pokeball and a Tyranitar popped out accompanied with a cloud of blue stars.

"What's with the wired effects when the Pokémon pop out of their pokeballs?" Asked Bolt to no one in particular.

"Those are seals, they add an effect when you release the Pokémon out of their pokeballs. Most trainers use them for fun, but they're almost mandatory if they want to win a contest." Replied Star, he was examining the base, it looked as if he was making plans for the fastest escape, and he seemed jumpy.

"Star? Relax, I think we're safe for now, why don't we find something to eat?" Rose said calmly. She'd noticed how wound he was, he relaxed a little when they went to grab some food. It was set up in a bar, there were some plates at one end, following the plates was a small buffet of food. Star looked at them and smiled "Just like in most Pokécenters." and laughed.

He picked up a plate and walked along the bar, he used the tongs or spoons in the bowls of food to get some. Rose, Bolt, and Cella followed in suit. There were some plastic forks and spoons that they grabbed, Star grabbed a cup and pressed a button after placing it under a machine. Then they grabbed a table.

********************************************************

Thomas sat in the small cell that officer Jenny had put him in. He'd explained everything to the League, every detail of what they wanted to know and what he'd needed to say, then he'd left. There were officers waiting for him at the side entrance. This entrance was for trainers to enter only, so there wasn't anyone there except for a sullen looking man in a suit, he was at a desk marked 'certification' There was a machine and a poster there too. The poster had a picture of all the badges, which you had to have eight of in order to participate in any of the league finals. He'd shouted at Thomas when he was leaving, but didn't really care enough to try and stop him, what did it matter if someone was going [I]out[/B] without any badges anyway?

He still had his two Pokémon at least; he released Skarmory and Misdreavus. "Hey guys, I guess that I did the right thing, but this really sucks." The Pokémon agreed; Misdreavus sat in his lap, Skarmory folded his wings and lay down next to him. Thomas ran his fingers along his smooth bronze-colored back. "I miss those two, do you remember them? You met them a few times." he asked his Pokémon. They looked questioningly at him.

"Drrrreeaa?" asked Misdreavus, her voice confused. "You remember Bolt and Tilla, right? I hope that they're doing okay. I can't believe I was so stupid as to believe that jerk. It's been three years, and I can't believe that I didn't leave sooner."

One of the officers came into the room where his cell was. "So, you have some Pokémon? We're going to have to take them, you know that right?"

Thomas sighed, his Pokémon shook their heads and growled. "Calm down guys, do you honestly want to spend ten years, or more, in here with me? There's nothing to do or see. Skarmory, there's no place to fly or stretch your wings. Misdreavus, I know that you like places like this, but tell me honestly, would you be happy if you didn't ever get to see another Pokémon?" The Pokémon sat firmly at his side, they were talking, trying to defend Thomas even though the officer couldn't understand them, Thomas couldn't get them to go into their Pokéballs.

"_I'm not going anywhere without Thomas! Even if I have to stay here for the rest of my life! I don't care about flying, he's been my best friend for the past twenty years!_" It was Skarmory, even though neither of the humans could understand Pokéspeak they understood exactly what he was saying.

"_If you think I care about any other Pokémon besides Skarmory you don't know as much about me as you thought. I'm not leaving you, and there are other Pokémon here. But that's beside the point. You saved my life and I'm not letting you waste yours!_" Growled Misdreavus, her small form trembling. The two humans stared at her. Then the officer walked over to the door.

"I don't think they want to leave, they seem to be friends with him and he can't get them inside their Pokéballs, if the Pokémon don't want to leave there's nothing I can do to take them away."

One of the shadows behind the door spoke then. "Have him recall his Pokémon, we'd like to speak to him." Thomas heard the voice and was finally able to recall the Pokémon to their Pokéballs. Drake, Ash, Pikachu, and Jimmy walked trough the door, the officer left, seeing no reason for he himself to be there when one of the elite four and, well, ASH KETCHUM had just walked in.

"You can let your Pokémon out now." Said Drake. "The police don't like it when people have Pokémon while they're in jail, but unless the Pokémon shows serious signs of neglect or are extremely violent there's nothing they can do about it." Thomas released the Pokémon, they were glad to see that they were still with their friend.

Misdreavus curiously floated over to Pikachu, she nudged him and the two started to play together, she would float around him, and he'd jump through her insubstantial form.

"So what exactly are you doing here anyway?" Thomas asked while watching the two Pokémon play.

"We're letting you out, it's not exactly like you're going to run back to team rocket, and you're no use to us just sitting here rotting away." Said Drake.

Jimmy looked at Thomas Skarmory. "Wow, I've never seen a Skarmory that looks like that! It's amazing where'd you find it!?" Thomas smiled, His Pokémon crowed and strutted with pride.

"I found him at Stark Mountain in the Sinnoh region, I was doing research on the habits of Pokémon around there. I was watching some eggs hatch in a nest, he was one of them. Well, the mom came around several hours later and threw a fit when she saw him. She thought he was a different Pokémon so she pushed him out of the nest. I had no clue what else to do so I threw a pokeball at him while he was falling, I mean what else was their to do? He couldn't fly, he would've died."

The Pokémon sat down loyally next to Thomas, his head held high. "Wow, that's a little cliché." Stated Drake, as he took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the jail cell door. Thomas stood up and walked out of the cell.

"So what exactly am I going to do now?" He asked. Ash handed him his laptop.

"I honestly want to know why you'd pick now to betray team rocket instead of before, when they took those two."

Thomas shook his head. "I suppose you had to go through my laptop. I don't know why I waited this long. But I can tell you exactly what happened that day, every detail."

************************************************************

"So what are contests, you mentioned them earlier." Asked Cella.

Star took a bite of toast and swallowed, then answered the question. "It's where trainers show off what their Pokémon can do, I'm not really sure completely how it works, but it's supposed to be fun, and cool." They sat and ate for a few minuets; the food was considerably better than anything they'd gotten at the rocket base was. They followed Star to dump the plates when they were done eating.

The four walked outside, the snow was soft as it fell, it sizzled and evaporated before it could even touch Roses tail. "So, where's a good place to battle?" Rose mumbled to herself, then she noticed a large clear area that seemed perfect.

"Well, are you three ready?" Rose was full of energy, the fresh air and space was exciting after having spent more or less a month in that place, she thought about how much more excited everyone else who'd been there longer was.

"I'm ready to WIN!" shouted Bolt.

"Not if I beat you first!" laughed Cella. Star smiled and nodded. Rose and Star were across from each other, while Bolt and Cella were facing one another. They didn't notice but there were a few people watching them.

The battle started, Rose shot into the air and shot a flame-thrower straight down into the snow, melting it so that the dirt underneath showed. Star shot up too, a hurricane of snow followed his wings on the way up. Bolt crouched, his tail standing on end, electricity crackling up his arms and through his hair. Cella smiled, she shot off a quick attack at Bolt, he waited patently and as soon as she was close shot a Thunderbolt at her. She shot off to the left, the electricity followed her, something she hadn't expected. She turned and shot a swift at the electricity, it hit the stars, sending it back at Bolt. He waited patently then as soon as the stars were right in front of him he kicked them, shattering each in a burst of electricity. Suddenly he fell backwards as a Psybeam hit him, the rest of the stars shattering against him.

Rose sent a flame-thrower at Star, which he dodged, he spun in the air, and his tail flew at Rose. His tail was met with a blow from hers. There were even more humans and morphs watching now, a few of them ran to get others.

Cella used psychic to hold Bolt in place but it didn't work for long, he tore out of the attack and charged at her, then swerved and made a cage of electricity dance around them. Cella used psychic to break the cage and sent sparks dancing all over the field.

Rose and Star circled in the air for a few seconds then Rose charged at him, her wings outstretched. Star grabbed one and spun her around so they were facing each other. He locked onto her eyes almost immediately, they had playful sparks dancing in them, and his heart beat faster, had her eyes always been that amazing shade of emerald?

Then he dove straight down, the air and snow rushing past his face, he swerved and suddenly she was right next to him. "Just try and keep up!!" she yelled into the freezing air.

"Ha! I won't even have to try!" He shot straight up and swerved to the right. Rose was suddenly right in front of him, he accidentally ran into her. He backed up and they stood in the air face to face.

Bolt ran at Cella, his fist charged with electricity, it hit square in the stomach. Cella grabbed his fist and flipped him over. "I didn't see that coming!" He jumped up and span, hitting her with an iron tail. She grabbed his tail and used Bite on it.

"I bet you didn't see that coming either!" Cella laughed as bolt shook the attack off.

"How'd you learn Bite? Psychic types can't learn Dark type moves!" he looked at her, she shook with laughter.

"Well, think about it, Espeons evolve from Eevees. If I learned that while I was an Eevee Morph, wouldn't It make sense that I'd know it now?"

Bolt shook his head. "I suppose so, but I suggest you watch out for this!" Electricity crackled up Bolts back and arms, he smiled and crouched. Suddenly the field was covered in fireworks of electricity, sparks crackled and popped in the snow.

Rose quickly spun to dodge the blue lightning that had just filled the field, Star landed right in the middle of it, but when it cleared he was no where to be seen.

Now almost the entire base was watching, they followed each movement of the friends. Every now and then they would cheer as someone landed a spectacular hit. Right now they were holding their breath, some of them wondered where he'd gone, and others had to bite their tongues so that they didn't ruin the surprise.

Cella spun and kicked snow up at Bolt, he laughed and ran at her, his fist had sparks coming out of it. The attack hit but Cella retaliated with psychic. It pushed him back a bit but not enough, he ran straight at her and grabbed her arm in his mouth, using crunch. Cella took a deep breath. "I think that's enough for me, I don't want to overdo it now do I?" She laughed shakily, then walked over to the edge of the field; she turned and sat under one of the trees.

Rose landed just behind Bolt as Cella sat down, she set off a flame-thrower right at him as he turned around, while Star suddenly appeared seemingly out of thin air and slammed her with a dirt covered tail. Rose turned and slammed a burning fist into him, while Bolt walked over to sit next to Cella. "I think we'd better let those two finish up, I don't know about you, but I don't think I'm ever doing that again, they play rough." He murmured to Cella, she nodded.

The crowd seemed to have slowly changed from humans and morphs to mostly humans. There were several other battled going on, Two Scyther Morphs seemed to dance with their lightening speed while the blades on their arms slashed air and sliced snowflakes in half. A Gligar Morph was battling a rangers Persian, while a Larvitar Morph was facing off with a Skorupi Morph. There were several other battles going on, everyone was having fun, they could battle freely and _have_ fun.

Rose and Star were in the air, each attack expertly placed. Most of them were dodged, every now and then one would hit though. Both Morphs were out of breath, their movements became a dance, each making moves that would be taken or dodged, both retaliating with equally matched moves, sometimes a small explosion would happen, blocking them from view.

"You can't win!" Star teased.

"Wanna bet? Ha! There's no way I'm loosing now!" They flew at each other only to stop facing each other again.

Star looked into her eyes, they had a steady fire burning in them, something that said 'I'm not gonna give in and you'd better not either."

His heart started up double time, suddenly he shot past her and then rocketed towards the ground. He landed and grabbed a handful of snow. He hurled it at her "HEY! Now you're gonna get it!" She swooped down and grabbed an armful of snow, soon both were covered in white slush, and Cella and Bolt had joined back in. Snow was flying everywhere, and all battles were quickly forgotten.

Suddenly Rose tackled Star, they somersaulted through the snow, suddenly Rose was pinning him down. She looked deep into his soft gray eyes, suddenly she felt something, like her heart was trying to break out of her chest. "I think we'd better go inside." She breathed, getting off him.

***********************************************************

Tyler was standing at the meeting, Mike was now wearing a pair of jeans and a gray T-shirt, he now looked much more like a normal teenage boy. The other two team rocket members were glaring at them. Alexis raised her hand. "Yes Alexis?" he called.

She stood up and walked over to the boy. "I know you trust him, but he was a rocket, how do you know he won't just walk out of here in the middle of the night?"

Tyler shook his head. "We don't know that, I don't even know if the information he gave me is real, but that's part of what this group is, isn't it? He's an orphan just like us and he was pulled into something he didn't really want to be a part of. Each one of you knows what it's like to have to search for a group to belong to. Well, he found one he thought he belonged to. And he was lucky enough to find another group, us, where he isn't threatened and frightened every day."

Everyone seemed to agree, one of the ranger apprentices stood up. "Our base just received news on the morphs, Tyler, your cousin, She's there."

Tyler suddenly burst into a huge smile. "Is anyone else there! What about mom, or my uncle?"

She shook her head. "No, I don't know, but we heard news about her. What do you want to do?"

Tyler took a deep breath. He thought for a minute. "How much does it cost to sail?"


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

**Day two of freedom, entering Dark Forest **

Giovanni sat at his desk, he was pleased with who'd come up to the challenge. "Sheridan, I want you to find him and kill him. And anyone else who's with him." The figure nodded and walked out the door.

The rocket standing by the firm oak doors shuddered as he went by. "Giovanni, are you sure what he told you is true? It seems extremely unlikely that any of them would do this unless they've been trained by us."

Giovanni turned in his chair, so that he faced the large window behind his desk that took up about a fourth of the room. He ran his fingers through his red hair as though he was frustrated, then turned and faced the rocket. "If I wasn't sure I wouldn't have hired him. Go inform that group of morphs, that the hospital seems to keep as pets, that he won't be joining them, for a while."

The rocket bowed, "yes sir." Then he walked out, shutting the heavy door as quietly as he could. Giovanni turned back to the window and watched as one of his sleek black helicopters carried the seemingly unlikely assassin off towards Sinnoh region. The destruction of that base would soon be the biggest mistake that flying humanoid freak had ever made, and he would pay, with his worthless life, the game was over.

********************************************************

Rose, Bolt, Cella, and Star were sitting at one of the tables near a window, leaning over a map. "The only way seems to take us through dark forest and around Lake Acucity." Star said quietly.

It was about Five in the morning, and the sun was just beginning to rise above the ominous trees of Dark Forest. "I don't have a problem with going through the forest, I have a problem with being attacked in it." Cella glared at the trees that seemed to only get darker as the sun got higher. "I'm not sure if you know this, but dark type pokemon don't exactly agree with psychic type pokemon." She glared at the trees again.

"We are all aware of that, it doesn't change the fact that it's the only way to go if we're going to avoid humans as much as possible!" Rose said with a sigh, "there's no avoiding it so stop complaining, we're wasting time anyway. If we want to be gone tomorrow we need to start packing."

Bolt yawned, his mouth opening wide so that his sharp white fangs gleamed, a couple sparks skipped off them and went out before reaching the table. "Okay, I'll start packing, cause I really have no clue how the hell to read a map and you guys are getting on my nerves. I'm sure that the rangers will let us take some non perishable food items and two or three pots for whatever reason we might need them." he then stood up and stretched as he walked over to one of the random rangers eating an early breakfast in the in the room.

The three at the table discussed the map for another minute. "alright, so how about we take this path when we get to mount cor.." Star started, but stopped them moment Rose opened her mouth.

"Lets not worry about the mountain until later, we already have at least a week long journey ahead of us, and that's if we ran the whole way. We'll have plenty of time to map it out while we're on the go." Rose said, while her eyes traced the route they'd drawn out on the map.

"I agree, we need to start packing, as was stressed by Rose before, and if we don't leave tomorrow we'll never get out of here. I'll look for the essentials, flashlights, those little foil thermal blanket things, first aid kits, and such. Why don't you two find sleeping bags, backpacks, and we'll probably need a couple changes of clothes, these are pretty worn out and I don't think they'll be warm enough." Cella said, making a list of items on a notebook that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

"I think they have a store here, it shouldn't be that hard to find things we need." Star said as he stood up, stretching his wings. "Come on Rose, let's ask where we can find what we need."

They walked up to the same ranger Bolt had, he had serious dark brown eyes. "Is there anywhere we can go to find supplies like sleeping bags and clothes?" Star asked.

"Sure, we have a free market. You don't have to pay for anything, it has all of the necessary items for going on long trips or journeys. There's also some canned foods and such." He said all of this and smiled at the two standing there. "If there's anything we don't have that you need try asking one of the other rangers if they could run to the poke mart in Snowpoint for you."

He went back to eating as Rose thanked him. She called Cella over and they went in the same direction Bolt had. The store was well stocked and they quickly found everything they needed and ran into Bolt. "We should try on some of these clothes to see if they fit." said Star holding up a pair of jeans.

"I'll ask one of the rangers if they have some dressing rooms." He said and walked over to one standing by the clothing racks, she nodded and pointed. The four walked in the direction she'd pointed.

"we're going to have to cut holes in all of these if were going to try them on." Stated Rose as they were nearing a set of doors.

"I know" said Star, holding up the jeans again, "but I think everything should fit, if Cella guessed your sizes right."

"Well, she is a Psychic type, I'll give her that." murmured Bolt.

They had stopped by the doors, they each went into separate rooms and began trying on the clothes.

Rose came out last, having struggled with getting her tail through the dark blue pair of jeans she was wearing without burning them. "How do I look?" she asked. She had a deep green sweater on that matched her eyes almost perfectly.

Cella, wearing dark blue sweatshirt and matching pants laughed, "You look great, green suits you!"

Rose laughed too, "you said it would!"

Star examined her, the deep color that made her eyes stand out like glittering emeralds was amazing, green more than suited her. "You look wonderful Rose, Cella was right about all of our sizes."

"Thanks!" she said, smiling. "You all look good too!" Mostly aiming the comment at Star, who was wearing a light grey T-shirt under an orange jacket. The jeans he was wearing were just a shade lighter than Roses.

Bolt wasn't paying attention to anything they said in his yellow shirt and red jacket, he had on a pair of dark blue sweatpants. "We should get going as soon as we're packed." he sighed.

"Let's go find backpacks, then we can find some thermal sleeping bags and a couple tents. The rest of the room should be used for food and we each should have a flashlight, even though I always have a light." Said Rose, scanning the store for something that would indicate camping supplies.

"You need a cot." said Star.

"Why?"

"Well, I don't think we want to burn down the forest." He smiled.

"Right, forgot about that for a minute." They began walking around and soon ran into the camping section. "This one looks nice." Said Rose, picking out a large dark blue bag, it had a red flame pattern on it.

"I suppose you're drawn to your own element." laughed Cella, picking up one that was dark purple. "These are pretty good sized, the label says they can each hold thirty pounds."

Bolt grabbed one, it was tan and red. Star looked through them quickly, then grabbed one with a dragon on it. He smiled "Each drawn to their own element."

The sleeping bags, cots, and tents fallowed the backpacks, Rose grabbed one of the cots and placed it into her bag. They decided that there should only be two tents, one for the boys and one for the girls so they could save room in the back packs. Each picked out a sleeping bag that seemed to match their bags.

"I suppose that's about it, we need some decent footwear and coats, then we can find some food." Said Star as he finished stuffing a tent into his pack.

The four went back to the clothing, searching for boots, Bolt looked ready to strangle himself with the sleeves of a hideous pink sweater. "How much longer are we going to have to stay inside?"

"You can go ask one of the rangers what Pokemon we're most likely to run into in the woods, after you have a coat and some boots." Said Rose, rolling her eyes at him. "The rest of us will find food, but don't complain if we didn't get anything you like."

There weren't many choices in coats and even fewer in boots, they'd been picked through. There were four colors to choose from in the coats, red, blue, the same disturbing pink as the sweater, and white.

"Well, I suppose I'll take a white one, since I'm continually on fire and will be easy to spot." Said Rose, slowly inching away from the intimidating pink color.

Bolt grabbed one of the blue ones, and Cella picked up red. "It's not really my color, but I'm not wearing the pink."

Star laughed. "I'm not taking pink either, I think I'll take my chances getting lost in white." He pulled the second to last one off the rack.

For boots the only choice was black, the ugly pink didn't even count anymore. Whoever decided to order it was obviously insane.

************************************************************

Tyler stood on the docks at Lillycove, thankful that it was raining and few people were out. Three people stood behind him, a boy at about seventeen, and two girls at the age fifteen. The boy and one of the girls were Ranger apprentices, the fourth of their party had lost her father and mother to team rocket, and had run away from the orphanage. She'd recently been living in an abandoned secret base until Tylers club had found her.

"There's someone over there, loading a boat." She whispered to the group. They looked to where her finger was pointing, there was a good sized boat being loaded to go across the sea. The person loading it disappeared inside.

"You three go first, I'll keep an eye out for anyone." Said Tyler, scanning the areas around the ships.

The three sprinted and made it to the ship with out any trouble, it was going well. Tyler took a deep breath and took a silent step forward.

"Those wouldn't be [I]your[/I] friends sneaking onto my boat, now would they?" A menacing voice rumbled behind him, suddenly Tyler felt a strong hand grip him and pull him out into the open. He sent electric shocks and punches at the dark tall figure holding him.

"OUCH! Damn it Tyler! You sure as hell aren't that pipsqueak of a Pichu you were five years ago! So much for giving you a scare, you could have killed me!" The voice boomed as the pair of hands dropped him.

Tyler rolled over and scrabbled away from the tall figure, he stared up at him as his three friends came running down the gangplank of the ship. "Vincent?"

The figure laughed again, shaking off the wet hood covering his face. "Who the hell else would be stupid enough to stand outside in THIS!" The Floatzel Morph shouted, laughing loudly again as the three humans stood staring between the two morphs.

"I suppose you got that boat you wanted, you'll have to tell me the story, how's Kelly?" Said Tyler a little shaken. He stood up, still a good eighteen inches shorter than Vincent.

"She's good, but you'll have to tell me what you're doing with humans first! And where you learned to fight like that, you might be able to teach me a few things!" He laughed again and herded the four teenagers towards his boat.

"You should know, you taught me most of it." Laughed Tyler. "I just got stronger, and faster." The four reached the boat, and made their way towards the captains quarters.

"I suppose I did, but you four, what were the chances that tiny Tyler, who couldn't even throw a proper punch, is leading a troupe of little stowaways, and of all things, onto MY boat! It's either fate or the fact that I've been away for far too long, so tell me what's going on at the village that you'd decide to run away with a troupe of humans and go out to sea?" they were standing outside the door, a faint humming could be heard behind it.

"Why don't we all tell you, because half the story belongs to humans now, and I'm sure Kelly is eager to know what happened too, unfortunately the news is grim." Tylers eyes were sad, the rain pattered on the deck, slowly picking up tempo.

"I'm sure the news can wait then." Tyler was surprised, but nodded anyway, there would be time enough for unpleasantries. "See, I find hard news is easier to take in the sun, and I've far far better news to share."

He pushed the door open and stepped inside the cabin, wrapping his soaked arms around a Lucario Morph and kissed her. Grinning widely, and turning towards the four people that'd just walked inside. "Tyler, why don't you introduce your friends to us!" He laughed, Kelly gave him a warning glance.

"Be quieter, you don't want to wake up all of Lillycove!" She scolded.

"Hi Kelly, these are my friends, Ben and Jess are Ranger apprentices, and this is Anna." he said, pointing out each with their names. "You look good, how's life on the sea treating you?"

She smiled and laughed, it was light and happy. "Fine, great actually, did Vincent tell you?" Her eyes were sparkling.

"Well, [I]you'd[/I] better say before you explode hun!" Laughed Vincent.

She rolled her eyes and pulled Tyler along, warning him to be quiet. They went through another door into a smaller room, everyone else crowding in behind them. "Isn't she Beautiful?" whispered Kelly as Tyler noticed a crib in one of the corners of the room.

"You had a child" He murmured as he walked towards it, he peered into the little crib, seeing a tiny Rioluish shape, eyes closed, but the colors weren't right, instead of the typical blue she was yellow, her fur sparkled slightly as she yawned, her little fingers curling around her tail.

********************************************************

Thomas sat in the restaurant, quickly going through files and erasing everything he could out of team rockets main files, making sure to completely erase all of his research on DNA. The only information left on it would be on his laptop, protected so strongly that it would take days for anyone but him to get inside. He looked around, making sure no one was watching him, you could never be too sure. There was a woman who'd pulled out a phone and was eyeing him suspiciously, and keeping her voice low.

He quickly left the building and met Ash, Jimmy, and Drake just inside the woods. "There's no way for anyone but me to reach the files now, unless they want to spend a couple of days working at it, and that's if I don't catch them."

"Good." Said Drake, staring at the laptop. "You're free to go where you want, but I'd suggest that you change your appearance and lie low. Never let that computer out of your sight."

Thomas smiled a little. "I'm thinking of going to Fortree in Hoenn, there's supposed to be a sort of club near there that team rocket was trying to destroy, I think I'll help them set up some alarm systems and cameras if they don't already have some." He said, staring into the trees. "If they already have some then I'm not sure what I'll do, probably see what they're doing and try to help." He didn't mention that he would be searching for Mewtwo on the way, not because of Ashes involvement with him, that probably would have helped him find him, but because he knew that what he wanted to ask of the Pokemon wasn't something he wanted anyone else to know.

"Fortree's a long way away though, and your Skarmory can't carry you all that way, how are you going to get there?" Asked Jimmy.

"Find a boat I suppose, I'll probably have to get a ride on a boat that's privately owned, too many people on anything else. Maybe I'll stow away on a cargo ship." Thomas thought back to the files he'd ripped from team rockets main computer. There was something troubling him. What they'd told him about Bolt and Tilla wasn't matching up, hadn't they told him that they were both still in the same base? Then why was her file, actually there were three, hidden under several large rocks of files, and had their own passwords? One of them said she was in the same place as Bolt, one said she was Dead, and the other said that she was in the hospital where they kept morphs who had suffered severe injuries.

"I'd better get going, before the police show up, or someone from team rocket, there was a woman in the diner…" He explained. All three people nodded. Thomas sent out his Skarmory and they flew away.

"Good luck!" Shouted Jimmy as he watched the Pokemon carry Thomas into the distance. Suddenly he saw a flash of purple cross the sky.

*********************************************************

Mewtwo sat in a tree just out of sight of the four people standing below. He was uncomfortable being this close to humans, but he knew there wasn't anything to fear. He quickly scanned their minds.

The boy was thinking about the scientists Skarmory, it was apparently a shiny Pokemon.

The dragon tamer was questioning his own sanity at letting the scientist go free, and was trying to figure out why he hadn't changed his mind.

Ash was wondering where he should go next, and thinking about the morphs. He was quickly making up his mind that he should go somewhere where he could find some, and learn about them.

The scientist was thinking about [I]him[/I].

Mewtwo almost fell off the branch he was on, then examined the scientists mind further, to make sure he hadn't seen him. He was shocked at what he discovered. Not only did this man know about him but he was looking for him and………. No, that couldn't be right. The crazy man who'd created him had had a daughter, not a [I]son[/I]. Mewtwo quickly alerted Mew who appeared silently after a few minutes.

"Hello Mewtwo, you seem…… Stressed?"

"No, see the scientist there? He knows all about me. He knows far more that even Ash does, about my DNA makeup even. He's looking for me and I think it's important that I get to speak to him." Mewtwo watched as he sent out a Skarmory.

"Go then, I'll keep tabs on Ash, until you get back. What we have to ask of him can wait. Celebi and Darkrai gave us some news about a change the other day, and it'll buy us some time."

"What changed?"

"Something between the Charizard and Flygon. And there was a change in the Luxray too, but Celebi couldn't pinpoint it. That Luxray Morph though, you should have heard the tale Darkrai had to tell….. but that can wait. Go quickly, fallow him."

Mewtwo shot off into the air after the scientist, Thomas. "He will be alone soon enough, and he can ask me what he wants. As soon as he's answered some of [I]my[/I] questions."

Mew stared after Mewtwo. "There is far more in work here than even Arceus could control, this is the work of something far greater. And I have a feeling that the destinies of many, far more than what we originally anticipated, are slowly being intertwined into something that none of us even have the smallest say in." He thought. "And the world will be changed because of it."

*******************************************************

Rose, Star, Bolt, and Cella Stood in the middle of the base. "We'd better get going, did everyone get what they needed?" Rose asked quietly.

"I think we have everything we need, it's a good thing that we're leaving in the spring, this would be a nightmare if we'd gotten here any earlier." Said Star, glancing at the dagger-like ice sickles.

The other two nodded, and all four started for the door. Suddenly a voice called and they turned around.

"Wait!" It was Kaylee, she was carrying something. She stopped in front of them. "I wanted to say good luck, and I have something to give you."

"You don't have to…" Rose started to say something but was cut off.

"No, I don't, but I'm going to anyway. If you plan on going across Sinnoh you're going to need to go through at least one town, and you probably want to avoid sticking out as much as possible. And if you need to buy something you're going to need money and identification. So I made these. They won't help if you're arrested but if you want to buy something you should be able to get away with using them." She handed them each a small card that had fake names and pictures of each respective morph on them.

"There are some people in this world who pose as Pokemon and, disgustingly enough, never take the costumes off. So you should be fine if you don't use moves, or move your tails when in a town. But if you go in as a group you're more likely to be noticed than if only one or two of you go. Also, here's some money, I know it's not much but trust me, you'll need it." She shoved wallets into each of their hands and walked away before any of them could object.

"That was… nice." Bolt said, staring after her back.

"Yeah, it was. It was actually a lot more than necessary. I almost feel bad." Said Star, shoving the little card into his wallet and putting it into his backpack. The other three watched him, then did the same, it made sense.

"It won't go to waste though, I'm sure that four days after we're on the road there'll be something we forgot." said Cella. "And when we get to a warmer region we'll probably need cooler clothes."

Rose nodded, then began walking to the door again. "Lets get going before it get's dark, I have a feeling that we won't be able to see for much longer and I want to get as far as possible before we have to make camp."

Dark woods was well, dark. The light was sucked right out of Roses tail, and seeing anything was difficult. The Pokemon were always present, on the edge of shadows, eyes shining through the trees. "I don't have a good feeling about this place." Said Cella, not saying what the others were thinking. They all had a bad feeling, and they all felt like it would be better to turn back and take the path, but none of them said it.

"It's just the woods, don't worry. We'll be in them for two days then we'll be able to relax." Said Star. He turned his head slowly to make sure the eyes stayed where they belonged. It had been steadily getting darker for the past hour.

"We should stop, before we can't see anything, I think it's getting late and I don't think we want to be out in the open at night. The next place that seems good for camping, we're setting up tents." Said Rose.

"Sounds good to me, but I don't know how so set one up." Said bolt, glaring at the trees. "I can't see through anything here, it's like a there's a huge blanket over my head when I try. Like being in that room again, except I could see around the room, this is, like being muffled, blindfolded."

"I can set up a tent, sometimes me and Tyler would invite some of the other kids from our village would go camping by the river, there were a few humans from Fortree that would join us when they found out we were there. It was great, we'd send a Taillow to one of the kids and then they'd send the message around until we had enough people for a huge campout, sometimes we ran out of food!" She recalled happily. "It was just us kids, there were never any adults, there were always new stories to tell when we lit the fire at night, and the old ones were great too. Me and Tyler always had the best ones though, we'd always tell the legends." She was going to keep talking but noticed that everyone was watching her. "What's up?"

"You went camping with humans?" Asked Bolt, with accusation in his eyes.

"Yes, not all humans are evil Bolt, just the ones you lived with."

"You don't know anything about who I lived with." he growled under his breath, glaring at her.

"Unless you mean to enlighten us about your past why don't we start setting up camp." Suggested Rose, watching them carefully. "Bolt, do you know how to set up a tent?"

"No." He stood quietly, his eyes flashed gold for a minute. "Still can't see anything." He mumbled quietly.

"Star, you?"

"Of course, you don't spend your life running through woods hiding from humans without knowing how to set up a tent." He chuckled a little.

"Well, Cella has already told us that she can set up tents. So why don't me and Bolt go find some fire wood, and you two set up the tents." Rose began to shrug her backpack off her shoulders.

"Okay. Bolt, leave your bag here so that we have both tents. Both of you be careful, don't go out to far." Said Star, he looked worriedly at Rose but quickly turned his head away. Cella muffled a giggle.

"Don't worry." Rose smiled, then went away from the small clearing they'd found, Bolt fallowed.

They began picking up sticks, they were black and dead, some of them looked like broken claws. "I wonder why these woods are so dead." Said Rose, looking at the trees.

"I don't know. Maybe we'll find out someday." Said Bolt in a dead voice, his eyes were far away.

"Are you okay Bolt?"

"What makes you ask that?" He asked, keeping his eyes down, scanning the ground for more wood, even though he had a good armful.

"Because since we've escaped that base you've been, well, I don't really know how to put it, but you seem depressed, and last night when you were sleeping you were so restless you woke us all up, you screamed once."

"oh. sorry." He kept his eyes to the ground still, he wasn't even pretending to be looking at something anymore, he was just avoiding Roses gaze.

"Bolt, look at me. What is wrong?"

He sighed and straightened up, he made sure she got a good look at his eyes. "Nothing's wrong, you're wasting your breath." He said it evenly, but his eyes said that everything was wrong, there was an aura of pain around him that even Rose could feel.

"Are you sure, really?"

"Drop it. Lets get back to the campsite, before Star decides to come looking for us."

Rose was frustrated, but let it go. "Yeah, I don't want him getting lost because we didn't come back fast enough."

They made their way back to camp, both the tents were set up and there was a circle of stones between them. "We're back!" Rose called.

Star shoved his head out of a tent. "Hey, we got everything set up, sleeping bags and all, these tents are a lot bigger that they looked."

Cella crawled out of the other one and jogged over. "Great! I just finished setting up that cot, and Star made a fire pit!" She pointed to the circle of stones.

"Great, I'll get started on a fire, Bolt, could you get out some food? I think most of it's in your bag." Rose walked over to the pit and began setting up sticks.

"Sure." Bolt went over to the tent the Star was half out of.

The fire was soon burning bright and hot, Rose was watching the flames and playing with them. The dark was still present, the light hadn't chased it away, it seemed like the darkness was trying to smother it.

Star was sitting next to Rose, watching as she ran her fingers through the flames. He had an urge to stop her, but didn't. Fire couldn't hurt her.

"So, before you started running from the rockets what were you doing?" asked Cella as she chewed on a granola bar.

"I lived in a desert, there was this clan of morphs who took me in. I was pretty much an orphan, my mother died when I was young.

Pokemon in the desert aren't so nice, my mom, her name was Katharina, was killed trying to protect me and my sister, my sisters name was Silent leaf, I just called her Lee, we escaped, mom didn't. My father blamed us, he became wild and beat my sister, she ran away, she was lucky, she could fly. I don't know why she didn't take me with her though.

So he turned to me, he deluded himself into believing that it was my fault. He ignored me, and when he didn't ignore me he attacked me.

I was three.

And for years I believed him, for years I believed that it truly was my fault, that if I hadn't been born mom and dad and Lee would have been happy.

So I left. I was five.

I was hoping that a wild Pokemon would find me and kill me, that they would slowly tear me apart and leave me bleeding in the sand. I ran, I just went trudging through the sand and fought off sandstorms, I didn't rest, eat, or drink for days. Soon I became dehydrated, and collapsed in the sand, I lay there, just wanting it to end.

Then Gem, a Rhydon morph, found me. I don't remember much about it, but she took me to that clan, helped me get better, took care of my bruises and cuts………………."

He stopped, staring off into the dark trees, while everyone stared at him. "Oh God. Star? I'm so sorry, God I'm so sorry." Rose whispered, tears in her eyes, she watched him.

He turned towards her. "It's okay, I'm just used to it. My life has been a complete hell since I was born, why should it stop now?"

Bolt took a deep breath and stood up. "You should get some sleep, I'll take the watch for the night."

Cella turned to him, "the whole night? You can't stay up [I]all[/I] night."

"I've stayed up for a month before, without even sleeping for an hour. It's been that way since I was fourteen, don't worry about it."

"You must need sleep sometimes, you slept at the base." Said Star.

"I don't need sleep, I just like to sometimes. If you knew how many nights I've just stayed awake thinking, practicing moves…" he shook his head.

"Fine, you can have the watch for the night I suppose. Just make sure the fire doesn't go completely out." Rose stood up and walked over to one of the tents, Cella fallowed her, they both said goodnight.

Star looked at Bolt. "You don't need sleep." It wasn't a question, just a statement.

"No, not since I was fourteen, and now that I know I keep you guys up I'll just stay awake." Bolt swished his tail through the cold air. There wasn't any snow on the ground, but it was still freezing out.

"Aahhh. Well, goodnight then, if anything happens wake us up." Star went over to his tent and climbed inside.

Bolt watched the fire for a minute, then began scanning the forest, the eyes were back, staring through the trees. Every now and then he could hear a sound, like the snap of a twig, or something sniffing the ground. Bolt just sat where he was, his eyes were the most threatening of them all.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

**Day three of freedom**

Thomas looked up at the passing sky, he had been lucky. He took a deep breath and watched the waves. The captain of the ship he was on had agreed to take him across the sea, the trip would probably be short, the ship was a passenger ship, private owned by some guy the captain hadn't actually ever seen. Thomas was paying him 2000 poke a day, but he didn't mind, all of the genetic research he'd done and sold had earned him a small fortune. Not like that mattered, what did money matter? Sure you could buy things, sure you could influence people. Money didn't matter to Thomas, things he really wanted you couldn't really buy, and he'd blown his chance at a family. His son hated him, and he wasn't allowed see him. Thomas didn't even know if he was alive.

Thomas was thinking about Bolt. "He would have loved this." He murmured to himself, staring at the sea. And it was impossible to not think of Tilla when he was thinking of Bolt. He remembered the pure adoration he had seen in Bolts eyes the moment he'd set eyes on her. It was like they'd been made for each other, of course she'd been born, so any question of that was out. He chucked at this.

He thought about her being shiny. None of the morphs that had been created had been shiny, none of the morphs he had on record were shiny either, except for her. It was possible that there were others out there, but he hadn't seen any.

Thomas smiled, then frowned, and clenched his fists. He could feel his nails digging into his palms, but didn't care. It was his fault. It was his fault that Bolt and Tilla were in that horrible place, or places. Rockets were usually thorough when causing as much pain as possible. They had probably been separated, and then told that the other was dead, he knew how that would kill Bolt, how it would crush Tilla. Thomas nodded to himself once. As soon as he was done in Hoenn he had to find his son. And then find Tilla.

Thomas turned and went below deck, he turned into what he thought was his room, but immediately realized his mistake. Especially since humans didn't have long yellow striped tails, or strange little horns coming from their hair. The morph turned quickly, baring her teeth. "Well shit!" She growled. And humans definitely couldn't shoot off sparks.

************************************************************

Mew floated silently over the two humans, the one named Ash, a human the small pink Pokemon knew. And one named Jimmy. The child chatted happily to Ash and the Squirtle walking beside him. Pikachu was sitting on Ashes shoulder, watching Mew. Ash had dyed his hair again, it was an annoyingly bright blue color, he looked ridiculous. Especially since he was wearing sunglasses, in the woods.

"Mewtwo, can you hear me?" The cat thought along the link between his and Mewtwos conciseness.

"Yes, I know where he is and where he's heading. It shouldn't be too long before I can talk to him. I've been scanning his mind some, but I haven't learned anything new that I could tell you right now, most of it can wait until you can get to one of the meetings." Mewtwo said this quickly, going over what he'd learned in the clearing.

"Be careful, if he is his son, and he knows as much about you as you say then you could have a problem."

"Like what? Worst case scenario I have to erase his memory, like I did with Ash the first time."

"You can't erase his whole memory, even Uxie can't do that without leaving them as an empty shell. From what I viewed in his mind he's known about you for far longer than what you could erase without doing any harm."

"Then we'll see." Mewtwo cut the connection, and continued swimming silently beneath the water. He quickly rose above the water, he could taste salt as he opened his eyes and took a deep breath, looking out towards the boat. "We'll see."

*************************************************************

Cella opened her eyes, it was lighter in the tent, but the light was dim. It took her a moment to realize where she was. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, then looked over at Rose, her tail was twitching slightly where the end hung off the cot. She didn't look very comfortable, her wings were spread out, hanging off the cot, her tail was laying over her legs so that it couldn't fall off and set the tent on fire. "Better let her sleep as long as possible, she couldn't have gotten a good nights sleep, laying like that." She murmured. Cella climbed out of her sleeping bag and pulled the tent flaps apart, a burst of cold air hit her as she stepped outside.

"Good morning, you know it's only about three, right?" Said Bolt, looking at the small compass watch hanging from his backpack. "You only slept for five hours."

"You didn't sleep at all. Why are you so worried about me?" She stretched and sat down, looking at the trees. It seemed more like evening than morning. "How could something stay thins dark all the time." She growled to herself.

"I don't know, Maybe there's a legend about it somewhere. In Canalave there's supposed to be a library, you could look for a book about it there before we leave I suppose. I was looking at the map while keeping watch, each city is very interesting, in Vielstone there's this giant tower, and in Floaroma town there's a Flower shop." Bolt pointed out the location of the library.

"I wish the sun could rise in this place, it's making me itchy." said Cella, shifting on the ground, not paying much attention to the map. "You know any attacks that could light this place up, just for a few minutes?"

"No, sorry. You could wake up Rose, but if this fire hasn't made it any lighter then I doubt anything she could do would either." Bolt said, pointing to the flames, they still looked like they were being smothered.

"The rangers said that they had a lot of problems with poaching in this place? How could anyone stand to stay here for more than a day, let alone long enough to kill something." Cella shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. "There isn't even snow here. How the heak is that possible? There was snow everywhere before we came in here." She complained.

He kept staring into the trees, as if there were something he was trying to see. "They set traps. I was talking to one of the rangers earlier, she said that people make pits, set up nets, and set ursa traps. Then they come back later and if the Pokemon isn't dead they just wait. Humans are horrible, aren't they? Just because they don't understand something they have to go and kill it. I've seen pelts, where I lived before, there were hunters who would find rare Pokemon and kill them so they could make a profit off of their hides." He stopped, no need to tell her about the Luxray and Eevee furs. That'd just give her nightmares.

Bolt scanned the area again. "Those stupid eyes are back." He growled, staring at the shining pinpoints of light. "They've been here on and off all night."

Cella looked around at the eyes, "I wonder why. We haven't exactly done anything but sleep and talk."

"Maybe they find us interesting." Bolt said simply. "I doubt that they've ever seen something like us before."

They sat in silence for about thirty minuets, both staring at the creepy eyes. Then they watched as they began to disappear again, pair by pair, until they were all gone.

"It's been like that all night?" Asked Cella, still staring into the trees.

"Yeah, now that they're gone I'm going to find some firewood, we're running low." Bolt gestured towards what used to be a pile of wood. "Now that you're awake I can go get some, just enough for a the few hours until Star and Rose wake up."

He stood up and stretched, carefully sniffing the air. "I won't go far, if I'm not back in fifteen minutes wake up Rose and Star." He disappeared into the woods before Cella could say anything, she grabbed the watch attached to Bolts backpack. "Okay, if he's not back by 4:28, wake up Rose and Star." she mumbled. "What the hell are they going to do, get lost in the woods too?"

"Who's getting lost?" Said Star as he unzipped the tent.

Cella jumped, then turned around. "Did we wake you? Sorry. Bolt went to get some firewood."

"No, you didn't wake me, I actually hardly slept at all last night, I think I might have slept for two hours, I just finally gave up. He went to get some by himself? He'd better be careful then, these woods aren't exactly the safest place."

"Tell me about it. I have no idea what he was thinking."

"Well, Rose wasn't up, and neither was I, and we were running out of wood for the fire. If I were him I probably would have done the same thing, he can easily protect himself, and no offense, but if you went out to the woods to get fire wood by yourself and were attacked by dark types, you probably wouldn't fare so well. He can more easily fend off dark types, because he isn't as vulnerable to them. Not wanting to wake up anyone, and not wanting to leave the camp unprotected, he chose to go by himself so that someone was there to wake us up if we were attacked."

Cella just shook her head at him. "No offense taken. Did anyone ever tell you that you think about things way too much?"

"Yes, often."

The answer surprised Cella and they sat in silence for a few minutes when Bolt suddenly came into view. "Yippie, now there are huge mobs of Murkrow everywhere. I hope Rose wakes up soon so that we can get out of here." he threw two pieces of wood on the fire, then sat down across from Cella.

"As soon as Rose wakes up we'll get going." Stated Star, glancing at her tent. "I wonder why she sleeps so long."

Cella laughed quietly. "She grew up in a village, like I did. Most morphs in villages go to bed late, and get up to match. She didn't spend enough time in the base to fully adapt to the times the rockets set, so while you two have been getting up early and running for most of your lives, she's been sleeping in late and playing checkers."

"Right, because checker boards are so readily available in villages. The three we did have were stolen, and I never really liked the game much." Roses head was sticking out of the tent flaps. "Besides, in the morning there were other things to worry about, like food." She grinned, then stepped outside.

"How long have you been awake?" Asked Cella, turning her head to look at her.

"Something about Star over thinking things." She grinned, sitting on the ground next to Cella. "I suppose we should start packing up, these woods give me the creeps too."

"Yeah, the faster we get out of here the better." Cella was already inside the tent, packing things up.

"Did she actually move?" Asked Bolt, staring at the spot she used to be in.

"I don't know. Apparently she's extremely eager to get out of here." Said Star, looking between the tent and the same spot Bolt was. "Why don't we work on getting the other tent down?"

*************************************************************

Thomas took a deep breath while staring into the eyes of the morph, she was growling, and in a rather comical fashion, had every hair on her head and body, that he could see, sticking straight up with static. If it wasn't for the fact that she could be dangerous and probably kill him if she wanted, he would have laughed. Instead he opted for a quiet "Hello," Then continued, "I didn't mean to disturb you, I must have wondered into the wrong room."

This threw her off guard, and she stared at Thomas, confused. "So the fact that I have a tail and am shooting off electricity doesn't have any effect on you, or are you just blind?"

"I'd rather be blind than know that the fact you can't be around other people is my fault." He whispered under his breath. "I've spent a lot of time around morphs, I didn't expect to run into on this boat."

"Rocket?" The Electabuzz morph growled.

"Used to be, ran away, I was important so I couldn't just quit like the grunts can. I have an interesting story to tell if you don't kill me, although I probably deserve to be killed, painfully." He said very quickly, not quite comprehending the words coming out of his mouth. His brain, at this point, had shut down and was letting his body do whatever it wanted.

She loosened her stance and walked a few steps closer. "How many did you kill before you realized that we were actually people, and not just vicious animals?" She hissed angrily, she considered just killing him, but dismissed the thought, no need to upset Vincent by killing a passenger on one of his boats, especially when she was getting passage to Hoenn for free.

"I never killed anyone." He said sadly, looking away from her. "It's never been a question to me that morphs are people. The ones I know are far more human than most humans I know." He smiled a little, but then let his face fall. "Everything that's happened to them, to you, is my fault."

"How is that possible, it's not like you created us." She was beginning to feel sorry for him when she saw him wince. He had a look on his face that gave an impression that he had just been stabbed in the stomach.

"It's far more like that than I would like. It's too late to change it now though." He looked out the window, then realized that he was still standing in the doorway, with the door wide open. He turned slightly and shut it, then slid down it and stared blankly around the room.

The morph just stared at him. It had been silent for exactly ninety seconds when she opened her mouth. "Why the hell are you here? You're probably one of the richest people on earth, you had unlimited recourses at your hands working for the rockets. What on earth would make you want to run from it, what did they do to you?"

This wasn't what he had expected, anger, spite, trying to kill him… these were things he expected and would have preferred. Instead he was being questioned, calmly. He answered her question emotionlessly, the days events were not going as planned. He made a mental note to always double check his room number from now on, his brain was still on standby though. "They took my son. That is what they did to me. The reason I am here, on this boat right now, is because I'm looking for a Pikachu morph named Tyler. In Fortree city there's supposed to be some sort of club he runs for the purpose of finding his family and getting revenge on team Rocket, I want to help them." He didn't see the point of avoiding the question, it wasn't like he had anything to hide from this morph, who would she tell?

" I suppose it is your fault then. You had a son? What was his name?"

"Why do you even care?"

"I have no-"

Their conversation was interrupted by a high pitched voice. "Ashley! Who are you talking to?" A small child ran into the room, then stopped suddenly. "Ashley… Who's that, he's a human! He's sitting on the floor, did you hurt him? Was he going to hurt us? Does he work for the bad guys… Ashley?" she was standing behind the Electabuzz morph now, looking up at her.

"I'm sorry, I should leave." He stood up quickly, then noticed something. The girl was human, fully human, she didn't even look related to the morph she was standing next to. Thomas stared at her, not meaning to, but just out of shock. His brain chose then to turn itself back on.

"This is my adopted daughter, Sam, her parents are gone. They were working on a protection system for our home, it failed and we were forced to flee."

"Oh." What else was he going to say? 'I'm sorry I ruined both of your lives by making one of you half Pokemon?' Yeah, that didn't work.

He watched as the morph picked up the girl. "You should probably find your room now."

"Yes, I should. I'm sorry, this wasn't right." All the morph did was nod as he opened the door and slid out.

"He didn't act like people usually do." Sam Commented. "What were you talking about?"

"He told me that he was trying to help a group of people in Fortree city, where we're going." Said Ashley, moving her hair out of her face.

"We should let him come with, if we're going to the same place! It would be fun!" Sam giggled, and suddenly Ashley was very glad that she didn't know who that man actually was.

"No, he's not taking the same rout as us." She didn't want Sam anywhere near him. She set her down. "I'm going to check for mail on the computer."

"Okay, can I go play with Furret on the deck?" She asked, holding out a Pokéball.

"Sure, but be careful, I'll meet you up there in a few minutes okay?" Sam nodded then ran out the door. Ashley went over to her bed and pulled out a laptop. It had belonged to Sams parents, she had taken it when she knew they wouldn't come back. She clicked the little button shaped like an e and it brought her to the only page she ever used, her e-mail. She typed in the address she wanted and began to type, the message wasn't long.

To whom it may concern: (AKA, everyone)

There is a man on the boat I'm traveling on. He says that he used to be part of Team Rocket, he says that he's the one who finished the blueprints for the creation of Pokémorphs. He says that his wish is to help you. This sounds suspicious to me, but he has proper motif, or at least he says. I know that we haven't personally met, but I believe that my input on this matter is important, because as crazy as it sounds, and even though I don't trust him any farther than I could spit, I believe his story.

There is potential danger in letting this human anywhere near the base, because even if he is telling the truth he is most likely being tracked. His story is that Team Rocket stole his son, something I easily believe, but it is not the whole story. If there is anything you want me to do, send me a message with direct instructions. Remember, I have Sam with me and I can't do anything that would have anymore negative affects on her.

From,

ElectricAshley

She hit the 'send' button and stood up. She could hear Sam up on the deck, giggling. Ashley stood up and stretched, putting on a hooded sweatshirt and hiding her tail, she made her way up to the main deck.

*************************************************************

The computer beeped on as a tiny box with the words You have mail! Click to read your message from: EletricAshley

Andrew stared at the screen and nearly spewed coffee into it as he read the message. Tyler had left him in charge of all the communication, but he had no idea how to reply to something this critical. He stood up and walked over to one of the people asleep on the floor of the base. There were about fifty of them now, and the base had already been expanded twice. But there was still plenty of room for everyone, a small kitchen, and a laundry room, which were necessary for this amount of people. Andrew sighed as he looked around the base. It wasn't just a base to these people, it was home, Andrew was one of the few people who was actually considered an adult, by the standards of the Pokemon league. If he had to, he could take complete responsibility for all of them, at least the orphans. The runaways would get him charged for kidnapping, and the morphs would probably get him in trouble for [I]something[/I]. His parents had been killed by team rocket when he was fifteen, because he stopped a minor operation that the league hadn't gotten to.

"Hey, wake up!" He whispered to the sleeping boy.

"Whaissit?" He mumbled, his eyes still half shut.

"I need to barrow your Styler."

"Go ahead, 'sin my coat." he mumbled and promptly fell back asleep.

Andrew dug through the pockets of the coat laying next to him, he felt the Styler under his hand and pulled it out. He went over to the computer and copied the message into it's messaging system. He quickly sent it, hoping that Tyler would get it soon.

*************************************************************

The sun gleamed off of Tylers fur as he stood in the crows nest, sticking his tongue out at Vincent, who was standing on the deck, rolling his eyes. "Really Tyler, the fact that you granddad was an Aipom morph is getting annoying, come down here a minute."

"Why! I'm having so much fun zapping Wingull!" he laughed.

"So I can beat you in a battle, little mouse!" He called, grinning mischievously.

"Ha! Fine, you're on, I'll win this time!" Tyler was down on the deck in a matter of seconds, electricity crackling up and down his back.

"Are you two sure?" said Kelly, watching as she held Jenna. "Because if one of you gets hurt…"

"Relax, it's all for fun!" Said Tyler, grinning.

Vincent chose then to jump Tyler, and missed. "Holy! Where'd he go?"

"UP!" yelled Tyler, landing on Vincents back, releasing a quick jolt paralyzing electricity. He was off of him in an instant, halfway across the deck. Stars materialized out of no where as Vincent shot them, three of them hit Tyler before he flipped around and smashed the rest into glitter with his tail. Suddenly Vincent found he couldn't move as a surge of electricity shot through his body.

"Whoa kid, you did learn a lot!" Vincent used quick attack, and landed a punch in Tylers stomach, which was met with a thunderbolt as Tyler grabbed Vincents arm. Tyler pulled him forward and rammed his head into Vincents stomach, but Vincent was quick and kicked Tylers feet out from under him. "But not enough!"

Tyler used quick attack to get out from under him, then turned to face him as he was suddenly knocked down by a jet of water. He used this to his advantage and shot electricity through it, straight into Vincent. He spun on the deck, then, on all fours, used quick attack, ramming his shoulder into him, and sending them both into the water.

A voice called down to them from the deck as they laughed and splashed each other. "Tyler, there's a message for you from Andrew, get up here now. It's urgent."

"Darn it. Sorry Vince, I'll beat you later, this is important." Said Tyler, looking at him apologetically.

"That's okay, kid." He said. Then he yelled up to the deck. "There should be a rope latter somewhere, throw it down."

"Andrew is in charge of communications for the club, there isn't usually much he doesn't know. I hope everything is okay." The latter splashed down into the water, and Tyler climbed up after Vincent. On the deck he took the Styler from the ranger, and had to read the first four sentences eight times. "What the… Okay. This is bad, really, really bad."

He read though the rest of the message carefully, twice. "Who is it?" He heard Vincent ask.

"It's a girl, electabuzz morph, that we've been communicating with for a while now. She just gave us information that could save all of our lives, and I hate what I have to ask her to do." He urgently started typing out a message on the small keypad.

He turned to look at Vincent for a moment. "And no, she's not a girlfriend. She's eight years older than me." Then he returned to tapping out his message.

"How did he know that was where I was going?" He asked to no one in particular.

"Hon, you're a little predictable, and he knows you almost as good as I do." Laughed Kelly. "What do you have to ask her to do?" She turned to Tyler.

"I'm going to ask her to trail this guy, or just plain travel with him. She has Sam, her adopted daughter, with her, so I can't ask her to capture him. Normally I would have her hold him captive and search him for any electronic equipment, then give him an electric shock to kill anything that might be under his skin. Then I'd send someone out to meet them once they got to land, but right now, I can't." He sent the message to Andrew, and gave the Styler back.

"Why exactly? I understand about the kid," Said Vincent, glancing at Jenna. "but it couldn't be hard to isolate this guy."

"Sam. Samantha has been traumatized, she watched her parents get murdered. All she has left of them is a Furret and a laptop. If she were to see Ashley doing something like that, what do you think would happen?"

"Wow. Tyler, when did you grow up?" Vincent had never seen Tyler act so serious before, and suddenly the fourteen-year-old looked forty.

Kelly was paying more attention to what he had said. "Tyler, is her name Ashley?"

"Yes, do you know her?"

"She's on one of our boats. We're giving her free passage to Hoenn so that she can get help with Sam. If we had known about your club, we would have contacted you and asked someone to meet her in Slateport. Who is this guy that you want her to fallow?"

"He was part of team rocket. He finished the blueprints on the basic DNA structure for the morphs and redid something to do with the way our brains work." Tylers ear began to twitch.

"How do you know this?" Kelly asked. Vincent was just shocked that something like that had actually come out of Tylers mouth.

"We've interrogated two members of team rocket. As soon as we got his name we researched him and managed to get into several of the main data files of the team, it took a while, but you'd be surprised at how smart some of those kids are. His name is Thomas, he recently disappeared from one of the major bases in Johto. They were tracking him through his laptop, but the signal disappeared from Kanto and reappeared in Sinnoh. Since we just got this news from Ashley, I'm guessing that he rewired it and set up a signal so that he couldn't be accurately tracked." Tyler was watching over the ocean carefully. "We can't be sure though, they probably have a chip in him, like they did you, Vince."

"Yeah. That was a pain in the butt to get out. Good thing they didn't get it in properly." Vincent twitched his three tails. "It sounds like this guy is for real though, if he moved the signal he knew about, and he didn't do anything Ashley or Sam, I think he might be a really powerful ally if he really means to help you."

"I know. He could probably help us get into the Rocket base near us and get everyone out. And if he knew how to replace the signal on his computer he could probably make The Home untraceable." Tyler began to imagine the possibilities in his head, but quickly shut them down. This wasn't something to daydream about.

"WHAT!?" Shouted Kelly, staring at Tyler as if he's suddenly turned purple and grown wings.

"The Rocket base near us, if we can get help from him we can get all the morphs out." Tyler immediately winced under her gaze.

"No. There is no way you are going to lead a bunch of [I]kids[/I] to their deaths. What are you thinking?" She growled, suddenly Jenna woke up. She didn't move, she just opened her eyes. The little morph looked around sleepily for a few seconds, then fell back asleep.

"I didn't think up this one, this plan is all Andrews fault. I would rather wait a couple of years and gather resources. Of course, if we do get Thomas then we'll have two former members of the team, not to mention a good amount of their information. One of our members is pretty sure that she knows how to shut down all of the electricity in the base and knows how to get us in." Tyler had his ears folded back, he was thinking.

"There's no way that you're all going to be able to get in and out of there unscathed! What if you get killed? How many of them have decided to DIE for this!?" Kelly said, making an effort to keep her voice even.

"Kelly. Most of our members come from families that have been destroyed by team rocket. Most of them have made it very clear that they will do anything to see them destroyed. I can't make their decisions for them." Tyler was looking her straight in the eyes. "No, I don't want to see any of them die. No, I don't want to kill anyone, but it's too late to change that."

"You've.." Vincent started.

"I suppose that it's about time to tell you what happened to our home, to me and Cella. And yes, I have. Several of these kids have, not because we wanted to, because there was no other way out. Trust me, I pretty much lost it after… I'll just tell you the story."

"Children shouldn't have to be exposed to this kind of thing." Kelly was rocking Jenna.

"No, they shouldn't, but they have been, and it isn't going to change until we do something about it." Tyler started walking across the deck. "I'm going to grab something to drink, I'll be back to tell you in a minute."

"Vince." Kelly stared at him.

"Yeah, I know. How does something like this happen?"

"I don't know how, but I do know one thing."

"What?"

"He's older than you were at that age."

"I know. I know that. Kel, I think we should help him with this in any way possible." Vincent stared out at the ocean.

"Vince?"

"Yeah?"

"We're going to."

*************************************************************

Rose stretched her wings as they walked through the forest. The flame on her tail was the only light they could get. "I think we should fly up and see how much further we have to go before we get out of here." She suggested to Star.

"Can't. The branches are pretty much a wall, it'd be impossible to get anywhere without tearing up our wings." Star looked up at the branches. They had stopped momentarily to get something to eat out of the backpacks.

"There's more than one way to get through the tops of trees." Said Cella, and before anyone could say anything she was halfway up one of them. "I can see light, hold on a minute!" She called down.

"Did anyone see go up that?" Asked Rose, staring at the slightly scarred bark on one of the trees.

"I did, I didn't know it was possible for someone to move that fast. I'd bet she's part Aipom." Sid Bolt, staring at the branches above them.

A few minutes later she was back on the ground. "It's not far, we're almost out of this place, in about twenty minutes of steady walking we should be in normal forest."

"Great, lets get moving." said Bolt, shouldering his pack.

"About five minuites more and we reach a large clearing." Said Cella as she did the same as Bolt.

"Rose and Star fallowed behind Cella and Bolt, dry sticks crunching beneath their boots as they walked through the barely visible trees. "I'm glad we're going to be out of here soon." Rose said as she swung her tail back and forth.

"Yeah, me too. I keep getting the feeling that something is fallowing us." Star twisted his head around, but there wasn't anything visible through the trees.

They walked in silence for ten minuites, the groups mood began to improve as they began to see light through the trees. "I can see light!" Said bolt excitedly. He quickened his pace.

"Bolt, stay with the group, I have a really bad feeling, something isn't right." Said Cella. Her ears began to twitch and every hair on her tail was standing straight.

Bolt turned and came back, Rose could feel the static coming off his body. "Yeah, me too. Something is definitely wrong here."

"Lets get out of here, quick, stay together." Rose began to walk forward, "stay in a single file line." She kept her eyes forward and kept a steady pace towards the light. Cella winced as a stick snapped under her boot. The darkness began to fade, and snow and leaves were beginning to show up on the ground. Suddenly they stopped, all staring at the same spot on the ground, Cella turned away after a minute. The small clearing was covered in blood.

"Oh my God." Whispered Star. He crouched down to examine the body more closely. The scarlet blood surrounding it was still fresh, he could see deep gashes in it's chest and stomach, he quickly shut his eyes, he could see the mans organs. The flesh was peeled back from his chest and there was a deep hole in his head. Star stood up and took two steps back.

"It's a rocket." Said Bolt. He pointed to the remains of what it had been wearing, on the shredded black outfit you could still make out something that vaguely resembled an R. "Skinner, we'll probably find a bunch of pelts nearby." Bolt said this without emotion, he looked down at the body as if it had never been alive in the first place.

"Skinner?" Rose questioned, twitching her wings. She looked back down at the mutilated body, and realized that the wounds had been inflicted by a Pokemon, she felt sick.

"A skinner, they're hunters. They track down Pokemon who have rare and valuable pelts, kill them, then sell the furs illegally. It's a dangerous job and several end up like this guy here." Bolt motioned to the body, the stepped around it to where Cella had moved so that she could avoid looking at it.

"I think… I'm going to be sick." She said, staring at a place in the trees a few feet from her. She placed one hand over her mouth and placed her other on her stomach. There were several pelts hanging on the branches of trees, below several of them small wisps of smoke were still making their way up from dying fires.

"This guy was good, too bad for him, he either didn't set up enough traps around camp or the Pokemon that killed him was smarter than average." Bolt scanned the area. "And bigger than something he'd normally kill, judging by the fact that he lost."

At that point Cella, noticing an Eevee pelt, promptly threw up at Bolts feet. She took a few deep breaths before she passed out.

"We should get out of here, now." Rose walked over to Cella. "Bolt, help me carry her, Star, erase our tracks. We don't want to be associated with this at all, we'll go back about half a mile, then we'll go around this." Rose removed Cellas backpack and handed it to Star. "Right now she's dead weight and having that on could hurt her, can you carry it?"

"Yes, I'll be fine." he hooked the straps of the pack around one of his wings. "This is sick, I'm glad he can't kill Pokemon anymore, but this is disgusting." Star glanced at the body again.

"Killing team rocket members is fine in my book, but it looks like this guy was deliberately mutilated. Kinda looks like whatever did this was trying to skin him." Bolt said as he helped Rose pick up Cella.

"I don't care, lets get moving." Said Rose as she and Bolt stepped around the body.

"I'll fallow in a second, using a light sandstorm should clear this up." He removed both backpacks and spread his wings out.

"Okay, be quick, and be careful." Rose and Bolt were already out of the small clearing before he started. A few minutes later Star joined them, he had some leaves in his hair. None of them said a word until the forest began to get dark again.

Rose stopped and looked around for a few seconds. "We should be fine now, I'll get out the map, if we're lucky that clearing will be on it. We can avoid any other known clearings until we get to Lake Acuity. I don't want to run into something like that again, it's disturbing and could get us into trouble." They set Cella down on the forest floor. "We should stay here until she wakes up."

Star dropped the backpacks and began digging in his for the map. "I doubt that we'd run into something like that again, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to check." He finally pulled the folded piece of paper out of one of the side pockets. "Here, we shouldn't be too far from the lake right now, I'd guess about two to three miles from it."

She opened the map and scanned the area. "Here it is." She put a claw on a tiny dot of open space. "There don't seem to be any others like it, we should be fine." Rose took a deep breath and let it out. She shut her eyes for a moment.

"Are you okay?" Star asked, watching her.

"Yes, I'm fine. Just a little shaken. I've seen people killed, I've seen their bodies, but that guy, he was tortured, purposefully mutilated. Whatever did that, they did it on purpose."

"Pokemon like revenge. My guess is that the guy killed a Pokemon that was important to another, maybe a mate or a child, and they cane after him." Bolt said, staring through the trees, he carefully avoided looking at them. "I know that I wouldn't hesitate, if something like that happened to me, to kill the one who did it."

"Yes, but to destroy the body like that, it would have been easier to just slash the throat, even if the situation was like that." Said Star. He was looking intently at Bolt, watching his every movement. He seemed uncomfortable.

"Do you think that whatever did that would have been able to reason, would have been able to just think of slashing his throat? If you had just had someone you loved taken from you, and murdered, I doubt that you would be able to reason over your instincts." Bolt knelt down beside Cella and checked her pulse.

"Yes, but the body was deliberately cut that way. There was no way that anything could have just attacked and killed, then left the body like that. The Pokemon that did that, it did it on purpose, it planned it out. They were trying to take his skin off." Rose put the map back inside the backpack, then stood up.

"Odd. Most would be okay with just the revenge of the murder, but to try and do the exact same things that were done…" Star just shook his head. "We shouldn't talk about it anymore. We didn't do it, we didn't witness anything. We just saw the body, and should move on." He picked up his pack.

Cella was beginning to wake up, she opened her eyes for a second, then shut them again. "We're out of there, right?"

"Yes," Said Star, "we went back about half a mile, we're going to go around it."

"Good." She opened her eyes, and took a deep breath. She sat up. "I'm sorry I feinted, I always feint after I throw up."

"That's strange, do you know why?" Star asked.

"Nope, just always have." She stood up, and stretched. "Where is my bag?"

"Here." Rose picked it up off the ground and handed it to her.

"Thanks, which direction are we going?" Cella pulled it onto her back.

"We're going to go west for a little bit, then turn south again." Rose stretched her wings out for a second, then closed them again. "As soon as we get out to lake Acuity I'm going to fly a little, my wings feel cramped."

"Sounds like a good idea, but we'd better make sure there isn't anyone out there first." Stars own wings remained folded against his back.

Rose nodded, then began walking west. "Maybe at night then, people aren't out as much at that time."

*************************************************************

Suddenly a figure landed in the clearing that they had just been in, enjoying the air during the day. He didn't care who saw him, his goal was to find them, not keep the rockets secrets. "They've been here." He smiled, then nudged the dead rocket with his foot. "Looks like they did some damage too, of course, he must be traveling with others. He wouldn't ever do anything like this, but the other two he was last seen with, they've been known to be violent." He said, going over the facts that he had been given about them in his head. "If my guess is right, they're heading for the mountains. I'll bide my time until they're more vulnerable." he stretched his wings out and took a deep breath, then he began walking through the woods, checking for any signs. "Very good Star, very good, but you forgot about scent, but I suppose that you don't think anyone would be searching for you in this place. As soon as you get to the mountain, you're mine, there'll only be one way out this time."

******************************************************************

"We should be there in a little bit!" Said Cella, standing in a pine tree, twitching her tail. Her spirits had risen so much that she felt the need to be in the same place they were.

Bolt rolled his eyes. "So how much Aipom do you have in you? Or is it Monferno?"

"My grandfather was an Aipom morph, one of the first morphs out there. Of course, it could just be the fact that when you live near Fortree city learning to climb trees in unavoidable." She climbed down and began walking in the direction of the lake.

"Well, that explains a lot." Said Star with a laugh. He could see on Bolts face that he hadn't expected an answer. "Well that was mature." He said as Bolt stuck his tongue out at him.

"It's not my job to be mature right now, actually, I'm pretty sure that in a few minutes my job is going to have something to do with zapping Goldeen and frying Gyarados." He smiled, letting little bolts of electricity off.

Star rolled his eyes as they broke through the trees, and there was the lake. He stopped walking, and stared out at it, there was some ice around the edges and a light snow was beginning to fall.

Rose stood there next to him, staring out at the still clear water, she could see Pokemon swimming under the surface. "Wow. I've never really thought about the three lakes of Sinnoh, but if they're all as beautiful as this… I can understand why we heard about them even in our Johto village."

Bolt spotted Cella and walked over to her, he glanced back at Rose and Star. "It's just a lake."

"It is a lake, yeah, but did you know that there's supposed to be a legendary Pokemon in there? Like the red Gyarados in The Lake of Rage, except rarer." She smiled and sat down in the thin layer of snow by the bank and tapped the thin ice with her finger.

"The Lake of Rage Gyarados was really just a shiny, I thought. Team rocket was behind that, they sent out a signal that was forcing Pokemon to evolve." he pulled off his pack and sat down further back where the snow was thicker.

"Yeah, but it's fun to believe in legends, and you have to admit, one hasn't been seen since. And how would you know about that signal, it happened about twenty years ago."

"I told you that I've lived my whole life, up until now, in rocket bases, right? You learn a lot of their history in situations like that." he turned his gaze to the water, a light breeze blew ripples through it as Rose and Star walked up to them.

"We should set up camp back in the woods a little ways, and stay here until tomorrow. It will be dark soon and the route that we'll have to take is notorious for bad snowstorms, something we don't want to get caught in." Said Star, taking off his pack and stretching his wings, he smiled up at the sky.

"And don't forget that Rose wants to fly some!" Giggled Cella, she began to laugh.

"Whats so funny?" Asked Bolt, staring at her.

She stopped laughing and just shook her head. "Nothing, just something I picked up on, psychic stuff."

"Okay, whatever." Bolt rolled his eyes.

"Come on, we should set up camp." Said Rose, walking towards the woods. "Since it won't be dark for a while, Cella, why don't you teach me how to set up a tent?"

"You really want to ask Star." She whispered under her breath, then she shouted "SURE!" and ran up to Rose. "It's easy, especially with good light."

Bolt and Star walked behind them a ways. "Do you have any idea what she was laughing about?" Asked Bolt, staring at her back.

"Absolutely none." He felt like he was lying as he stared at Rose, watching the flame on her tail dance.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

**Day four of freedom**

"Fish and biscuits." Sighed the girl sitting across from Tyler. She poked the food with her fork, then looked up at him. "Again."

He rolled his eyes, then sighed, chewing a mouthful of his own. "Look Clair, just eat it. I know that you're not used to it, but we don't exactly have the most extensive menu here."

"I don't like fish." She scooted it across her plate.

"You haven't ever gone without food, have you? See, here's the deal. You eat when you can, or you go hungry. If you don't like it, tough. Eat it anyway, hold your nose and choke it down if you have to, because keeping your stomach full is important." He took another bite of fish and after swallowing, continued. "Besides, it's the best breakfast I've had in a while, you have no idea how long it's been since I had ocean fish."

She just stared at him, then, after poking it a few more times, took a bite. She sighed, then looked down at the fish. "You know Tyler, I freaking hate it when you make sense."

"MORNING!" Shouted Vincent as he walked into the room.

"Be quiet!" Hissed Kelly as she put some more fish in the oven. "Jenna is going to wake up again if you keep that up." She glared at him, one of her fangs showing.

"Sorry." He whispered, then grinned. "You know, every time I see you, you get more beautiful." He wrapped his arm around her and planted a kiss on her forehead.

"Well, I've officially lost my appetite, I'm going to train my Bayleef up on deck." Clair pushed her chair out and stomped up the stairs.

"What's on her nerves?" Asked Vincent, watching her.

"She got seasick, and doesn't like fish." Growled Tyler, rolling his eyes at her retreating form.

"How could she not like fish?" Vincent stared at the plate on the table.

"Beats me, she said that she was a good traveler, but apparently she knows absolutely nothing about traveling on the sea. So much for bringing people who know what they're doing." he sighed, then stood up. "The other two got done a while ago, with the rest of the crew, they insisted on being taught everything possible about boats."

Vincent laughed. "Everything? Good thing that they're going to be here for a while!"

"There's more fish, if you want it." Said Kelly, smiling as she walked over to Vincent.

"No thanks Kelly, I'm going to go hang out in the rigging for a while." He walked up the stairs, then turned around. "Do you mind if I barrow the spyglass?"

"No, go ahead." Vincent began chewing a mouthful of fish.

"Thanks." Tyler ran up the rest of the stairs and disappeared.

"Those two have been driving me insane all morning, I swear, if I hear that girl say that she doesn't like fish one more time I'm going to shove one down her throat." Kelly looked like she wanted to pull her ears off, this was more evident as her fingers began to twitch.

"You should get some sleep this afternoon, you were up most of the night with Jenna and I'm sure you're tired. I'll take care of those two and I'll make sure that Jenna gets her bath." Vincent stood up and wrapped his arms around her again, this time kissing her on the lips. "Relax and get some sleep."

"Okay, are you sure?" Kelly leaned her head on his shoulder.

"Of course, you need more sleep, don't worry about a thing, I'm sure that the crew will be fine without something to eat every hour, you worry about us all to much." Vincent let her go and smiled at her. "I promise it'll be okay."

******************************************************************

"So, are you going to join her?" Cella watched as Rose flapped her wings, cutting the air and sending ripples across the lake.

Star shook his head. "No, if I fly right now my wings will freeze."

"Her wings aren't frozen." She chided. "You're just making excuses."

"Her body temperature is at least five degrees higher than mine, her wings wouldn't freeze unless she were flying in a snowstorm. Mine is not. Mine is closer to the temperature of a humans, maybe lower." He unfolded them for a second, then quickly snapped them against his back again, as if this proved his point.

"Whatever. I'm going to go bug Bolt." She stood up off the cot, they had moved it outside so that they didn't have to sit on the ground. The tents were packed, and they were ready to leave as soon as Bolt came back.

"Please don't, you've already feinted once on this trip, we don't need him knocking you out." Star stared out at the little island in the center of the lake.

"If he doesn't come back soon I'm going to chance it." She said, sitting back down.

"You never had much patience, did you?" He sighed.

"No." She turned around to look at the trees, but quickly turned around to look at the lake.

Rose landed in front of them a second later. "It looks like someone is living in that cave, there's a couple cots set up and a place for fires, we should probably leave whoever it is alone."

"Sounds good to me, no need to upset some poor hermit or something. They're probably just trying to live in peace." Star moved over on the cot to make room for Rose.

"You stink, we should build a raft and go out there and find out who it is, I bet that they're wanted criminals or something!" Cella jumped up and Rose quickly filled the spot.

"No, if it is a wanted criminal they don't need any trouble from us, and what would we do? It's not exactly like the police are an option, I'd like to see the looks on their faces if we tried to tell them anything." Rose smiled. "They'd probably have a heart attack!" She laughed.

Star smiled, then turned to look at her, she was facing Cella and he looked at the smooth curve of her jawbone, the way some of her hair lay across it, the dark brown against her skin. She turned to look at him, and her eyes instantly dominated his attention. He stared at them, like he was seeing them for the first time, each thin line of color, tiny emeralds planted in the color of evergreens. "Star?"

He blinked quickly. "Yeah, what?"

"Bolt has been gone for a long time." She turned to look at the woods, then spread her wings out.

"I know. I wonder what he's doing. I don't want to disturb him, but he's been gone for at least an hour." He stood up.

"You said that we shouldn't go looking for him!" Growled Cella.

"No, I said that you shouldn't go bug him. I'm immune to electricity, I'll go see what he's doing." He stood up and hurried off into the woods.

"Darn it!" Cella stomped a foot and growled. "He should have stayed here!"

"What?" Asked Rose, turning to look at her.

"Nothing, I just mean that we should have all gone together, if he gets lost in there, he doesn't have the map." She said, pointing at his backpack. She sighed and walked over to the bank, then crouched down and ran the water through her fingers.

"He won't get lost, if he has to look for him further than where our camp was then he'll come and get us." She stretched her wings, then shut them again.

"Bolt?" Star called as he searched for the Luxray Morph. "Where the heak could he have gone?" He asked himself as he looked around the clearing.

"Sorry!" Star looked up and saw Bolt, sitting in one of the trees. "Wanted to climb a tree."

"Did you get stuck?" Laughed Star, flapping his wings slightly.

"No," he growled, baring his fangs.

"Then what's been taking so long, you've been gone for at least an hour." Star smirked, at the look on Bolts face, he looked as if he'd been caught doing something wrong.

"I must have been daydreaming, sorry." He climbed down slowly, sinking his claws into the bark of the tree. He wasn't lying entirely, he had wanted to climb a tree, and he was dreaming during the day. He smiled and began walking towards the lake.

They reached the lake to find Cella chewing idly on another granola bar, and Rose messing with the flame on her tail.

"Hey, daydreamers back. Apparently climbing trees can take you to different worlds." Star laughed as Bolt rolled his eyes.

"I wish it could, then we wouldn't be in the situation we're in right now. Come on, we should go." He pulled on his backpack and began walking through the snow.

******************************************************************

Thomas tapped on his keyboard, responding to an e-mail from Giovanni.

"There is no way in hell I'm coming back." He muttered as he pressed the send button. He knew that Giovanni was waiting for the message and that he would get a reply soon, probably only reading the first three sentences first. He suddenly heard a tap at his door. He immediately shut his laptop and turned off the lamp on the small desk. Thomas took a deep breath and walked over to the door and looked through the peep-hole.

"Open the stupid door, I've already been all over the rest of the ship looking for your sorry ass, so I know that you're in there." Ashley had her hands on her hips and was glaring at the door. "I'm going to count to three, then I'm going to wake up every damn person in this hallway and tell them who you are." She began counting.

"Relax! I have to get the latch undone and turn off the security system!" He began to struggle with the lock.

"How the hell did you get a security system?" She growled.

"Really? Did you listen to what I said yesterday? If I created your blueprints I can set up a temporary alarm system. Now give me a few seconds, this stupid thing is touchy." He pressed a combination on the small keypad, then unplugged two if the wires. He sighed and pulled open the door.

Ashley stomped in and shook her head, she was soaking wet. She glared at him, then pulled the chair out from the desk and sat down. "Right, I'm not happy about this, and both of us are going to have to freakin deal with it."

Thomas sat down on the bed and stared at her, confused. "Look, I have no idea what you're talking about and it's six in the morning, so could you please tell me what you mean and why you're soaking wet?"

"How about we start with soaking wet? I told you I looked all over the ship for you, well, since this is unpleasant, I decided to draw it out for as long as possible. We just missed a huge storm, but it's raining pretty hard." She smirked, then swung her tail around to get some of the water off.

"Right, and what is so unpleasant about talking to me that you would stand in the rain for extended periods of time just to avoid it?" He was beginning to get annoyed, he glared at the dripping wet morph who was slowly soaking the ugly red carpet in his room.

"The fact that I have to travel with you, whether I like it or not. Oh, and there's the fact that I have to find a nice strong magnet and make sure you don't have a chip, that wasn't in the instructions, but I'm sure Andrew and Tyler would appreciate it if I checked. I could just run a light static over your body, but it might mess with the chip and that could kill you." She just sat there, with an arrogant smile on her face.

He nodded, realizing what she was talking about, and feeling a little bad about going through her e-mail. "Fine by me, I'd prefer not to die though, so why don't I just get a magnet out of my bag. If we find one I can throw it in the ocean, I was going to look for one after I got some sleep, make it look like I committed suicide. The team has already found out about me rerouting the signal in my laptop, Giovanni's been so stupid to inform me, so I'm going to send him a lovely suicide note. I have enough reason, and since they've taken Bolt I've tried repeated times. Of course, it'll be a huge surprise to him when I join you and your friends in getting Tilla and the rest of the morphs out of that hellhole in Hoenn." He smiled at the surprised look on her face, then laughed as she grew angry.

"So should I just kill you know or would you prefer it if I waited until they could find your rotting corpse." She snarled at him.

He rolled his eyes and figured that as long as she was threatening to kill him he could afford to be reckless. "Yeah, and what if Sam wakes up and sees you? That sure as hell wouldn't set well. I'm positive that you could lie your way out, but she'd never see you the same way again. Many of the morphs from that attack are still alive, four of them escaped with a group of others from one of the bases in Johto."

"How the hell!" She let electricity run up and down her arms and let out a deep ferel snarl from her chest.

"I read through your e-mail. After my lovely bout of stupidity I decided that it would be a good idea to go through all the laptops on the ship and take a quick look through any file that had been used in the past two months. I went through your mail, then I sent a virus to a rocket I found. He's on vacation, but that's not my problem. After that I went through my mail." He watched her. He knew that he was either going to end up dead or alive at her hand, and he was surprised to find that he didn't really care.

"Who the hell is Tilla, and I want to go through all of your personal files." She growled, she sent some sparks off that landed on the carpet.

"Tilla is, Bolts friend. Bolt and Tilla practically grew up together, they were born, well, Bolt wasn't really born in the proper sense of the word, but their birthdays are on the same day. Mine is too, which is honestly creepy, but getting back to Tilla, I want to find her, then my son, and see what happens after that. I know she's in that base because I examined her files until I had practically pulled them apart." he smiled for a couple of seconds, then frowned at the ceiling.

"Wait a second, your son was a morph?" She began twitching her tail and had her claws extended.

He shrugged. "The DNA has to come form somewhere, he's the only one related to me at all though."

"Why the hell would you do something like that? You knew that he would end up like everyone else! And you did it to your SON! No wonder you want to die you stupid ass." She snarled, staring daggars at him.

"Do you want me dead or alive? I know what I did, I was younger, stupider, when I made him. I still love him though, and every day I wake up and can't know that he's safe or alive, how the hell do you think that makes me feel? I wake up every morning sick to my stomach, especially since he left that base, I can't even keep tabs on him anymore. All the ones that escaped from that place, they had simple chips. I just disabled them with my laptop, Bolt never had one though, so I couldn't even switch the signal to only transmit on my computer. They operate under simple sound functions, if I have a chip I can disable it with one noise, kill myself with another, one sound actually wipes memory if they placed the thing properly." He stared at his computer, then turned back to her.

She looked interested and after she didn't respond for a minute he went on. "They don't know about the kill and memory functions, I added those for my own purposes, like what happened to Tillas father. Those are only for extremes. There's a pitch that every living organism makes when it is in so much pain that if it lives after the incident it will never be able to live properly. I installed it because the morphs would be killed anyway, and this would just do it quickly without pain or fear." He stared down at his feet, then looked up to see Ashley glaring at him.

"So you put these things in them so that they could be tracked? And what if they lived in the wild, and didn't want to die even after using that pitch? You're playing a game I don't like." She leaned back in her chair, and flexed her claws.

"I disabled all of the chips in morphs that are free, once a chip has been shut down you can only turn it back on from the outside, sounds don't have any affects on it. You could play the pitch for hours and it wouldn't do anything. The reason I haven't done this to mine is so that I can play dead for a while. The chips aren't affected by the elements, so I figured that throwing it in the ocean is a good idea." He smiled, and watched as she fidgeted with her tail.

"What happened to Tillas Father?" She asked, turning to look at the computer. "Did you just kill him?"

"No, he used to belong to a community of other morphs, humans started getting involved, like with yours, and he and Tillas mother were captured. He was tortured, they were trying to find the rest, and he died, I'd disabled his but they, aren't the best at Pokemon biology. I disabled the chip in her mothers, never got to learn her name, and she died giving birth to Tilla." Thomas looked out the small window behind his bed, he was standing, pacing now.

"Who took care of her?" Ashley had moved the chair over to the desk and had his computer open.

"I have three e-mail addresses, you can find them and the passwords under file one, it's easy to find, just type in 'default four' for the password, it should let you right in. One of the nurses took care of Tilla until she was ten, then she left. No one would take care of her, so I did until she was forteen. Not really a big deal, they each had their own room, Bolt loved her with his life you know, you could tell by how he looked at her, he practally worshiped her." Thomas walked over and watched as she wont through the files on his first address. Mostly stuff to his mom, a few letters to people he'd met while doing field work, innocent enough. She moved on to the second one, where she paused and read through more of the messages.

"You designed the release balls for Silph?" She turned around on the chair.

"Yeah, for the ranger union actually, Silph just developed them, I also upgraded the Pokenav for Devon, and sold Silph blueprints for an improved item minimizer." He took the mouse for a second and popped open a couple of files, showing her the blueprints, then went back to the mail.

"So, I'm guessing that the rockets didn't know about this?" She went back to clicking through his information.

"Hell no, if they knew that I could do anything but biology and the most basic electronics they would have killed me by now. No, they want me alive, which is why I want to play dead. I already have two other identities set up, forging a trainers license shouldn't be hard." he watched as she went to the third one, half holding his breath.

"Dear lord, did you actually send this to them!?" She was reading through the most recent message.

Thomas laughed. "Probably a bad move on my part, but yes, I did. I figured that as long as I was stealing all of their files and sending an irritating virus to them, I may as well add insult to injury, although I think the virus is probably already doing that."

"I don't even want to know, you're forty something right? What the hell did you do to your life… Actually, don't answer that. Right, so I don't think that there will be any issue with you betraying us or anything, kinda sounds to me like you've gone completely against them." She went to another file, and couldn't get into it. "What's with this one?"

"None whatsoever, when we get to the base I'm going to make it completely invisible, and set up a camera system if they let me." He smiled, then reached over and typed in a separate password for the file. "This one is different, I haven't let anyone see this ever, mostly because I would be killed. I started it two years ago."

Ashley stared as a website opened on the screen. "You run this?"

"Yeah, for two years. It's by invite only, anyone registered as a rocket can't get in, no matter what, just me. I've just started communications with several morphs, and helped some set up security systems, at least the ones with computers." The page was dark blue, white text was shown under a bar with the word 'news' across it.

"So you made this to advertise a war on team rocket?" She clicked on another page.

"No. It's more like a place where people can post their stories, anything to do with a war wasn't my idea, it was mostly Andrew who started that." He sat back down on the bed while she went through the pages.

"How to identify rocket activity? Wow, you weren't joking around, so when are you going to tell your human members about us Morphs?" She skimmed through the section.

"Most of them know already, and are probably part of Tylers club, I recently made a section on it if you'd like to read it. I also have a section on how most of the bases function and how to get in, and what you can expect to find if you run an attack on one. Andrews idea, I just sent him the information, he wrote the article. I think the kids really got it out for revenge, I don't want anyone to get hurt, but a lot of others are very open to his ideas." he was laying down now.

"It's probably the same guy that works in communication at the base. I can't right now, Sam is waking up and I have to go. You get that chip out of you and throw it in the ocean or whatever, we should be in the port around four today, I'll meet you there." She stood up and walked over to the door.

Thomas was digging though his bag on the floor. "Sure, we're docking in Slateport, so I'll meet you at the lighthouse. Make sure you tell Sam that I'm going to be there. And don't worry, I won't touch any of your mail anymore."

Ashley nodded as she walked out the door. She walked into her room, shut the door, and quickly laid down on her bed. "Right, I completely believe him now. It's stupid to, but I do. Who couldn't after that, and then that website, I'm sure it's the same Andrew, I should tell him, but I think I'll just wait and see how it plays out." she yawned and shut her eyes.

******************************************************************

"Great! Now finish it off with thunderbolt Pikachu!" Ash smiled as Pikachu let loose a bolt of electricity that sent the Aggron they were faced against crashing to the ground.

The Pokemon trainer recalled it and glared at Ash. "You know, all I ever run into these days is Ketchum wannabes."

Ash shrugged. "Sorry?"

"Whatever, I've got to go heal Aggron." The kid ran off towards Pewter city, the direction they were going.

"Wow. He was tough." Jimmy was sitting on the grass at the edge of the road.

"Yeah, that was fun. My Pokemon don't get a workout like that every day. He took out Charizard too." He released the fire type and gave him a revive and sprayed him with a hyper potion. He growled and puffed smoke, glaring at the place where the trainer had been.

Mew floated above them, watching as Ash healed the Pokemon. He smiled to himself, remembering how he used to always be over excited and how Charizard would set him on fire. He let his mind run along the link between his and Mewtwos minds. "Anything new?"

"Some morph called Ashley, Thomas is checking for some sort of tracking device. The group he's looking for, they're going to break into a team rocket base that's near Fortree and get everyone without a uniform out. The Boat docks in Slateport at four. I'll speak to him later tonight, then I'll be back." Mewtwo sat in the cargo hold, he'd gotten tired of swimming and figured that if anyone came down there he could just teleport out.

"Alright, that can't be good, you have to get back as soon as possible, you're the only one who can give those memories back, and explain to him what's going on. Make sure you get to speak to him today, then get back, we can't let it happen." Mew floated quietly through the trees, watching as Ash scratched Pikachus head.

"I know. Has Arceus figured it out yet?" Mewtwo poked through one of the boxes, then sighed as he placed the lid back on the package, it was just a bunch of Pokéballs.

"Yeah, but he seems pretty content to just let us do what we want right now. To be honest I don't think he likes or cares about the morphs much." Mew said, landing in a tree for a second.

"He doesn't like or care about me much either, we're freaks remember, we're not natural. The only reason I think he puts up with anything I do is because everyone else backs me up." Mewtwo opened another box and sighed, toothbrushes.

"Maybe. Of course, you do belong with the rest of us, weather he likes it or not." Mew hummed a tune quietly to himself.

"Thanks. I'll see you tomorrow." Mewtwo cut the connection and went through more boxes. "Who the heak has ever needed a ten pound bag of confetti?" he muttered as he placed the lid back on a box. "Really?"

******************************************************************

"This is insane!" Shouted Rose as she pushed against the wind. "We are not stopping until we get out of this mess!"

"I second that!" Yelled Cella, getting a mouthful of snow.

"Where did Star go!" Bolt looked around, all he could see was white. They were connected by ropes, as soon as they had left the lake they had run into roaring winds and flying snow.

"I'm over here! I can see Roses tail!" He was off to her left somewhere.

"How!?" Yelled Cella, scanning the area.

"Has anyone but me noticed that it's on fire!?" He yelled back. Everything sounded muffled, he just kept his eyes focused on the small glowing light a couple of feet to his left.

"Sorry!" Cella yelled. She stopped for a second and was nearly blown over by the wind, suddenly she caught sight of a feint glow a few feet to her right. She quickly walked over to it.

"Right, this isn't getting us anywhere. If you can see my flame get over here!" Rose blew a flamethrower into the air and got a puff of steam in return, it was quickly blown away as she felt something grab her wing.

"Gotcha! I swear, we've been out here for at least two hours, and I don't even know what direction we're going!" Cella Shook her head to get some of the snow off and only managed to get some in her ear.

"I'm right behind you, don't swing your tail. I never thought I would be glad to have fuzzy ears, of course, I never though I would be stuck in a snowstorm, so there you go." Bolt moved to his left a little, he could see Cella now too, and stayed where he was.

Rose jumped a little as she felt something grab her hand. "Star?"

"Yeah, it's me! We're going to have to find someplace to stop, I don't want to, but this isn't going to let up! I think it's gotten worse and the route is too long, there's no way we'll be out of here before night!" he stared down at her hand in his, it was so much warmer than his own. His heart skipped a beat as she twined their fingers together.

"How would we tell!? With all this snow it could be midnight for all we know! Hey, that rhymed!" Cella pointed up at the sky, a motion that no one saw because of the flying snow.

"Lets just keep walking, if we find something we can stop, but I'd rather not! I really just want to get out of here as soon as possible!" Rose began walking, the rest of the group moved with her. She held tight to Stars hand, hoping that she didn't have to let go soon.

******************************************************************

"GET DOWN!" Vincent yelled, holding onto Jenna, as a bolt of electricity came dangerously close to the boat.

"I'M STUCK!" Tyler shouted down from the netting, thunder rumbled straight overhead. The storm had hit without warning, dark clouds rolling in suddenly as if a hand had suddenly been placed over the sun. Tyler tried to pull his foot out again, twisting his ankle and failing for the third time, he began to chew on the rope.

"Hold Jenna, I'm going to go and get him!" He placed her in Clairs arms, she was the closest person, and began to climb. Clair just stood there and looked lost.

"Vince, no!" Kelly Screamed, she was helping tie down a sail, she stared wide eyed as her mate climbed up, he was soaked and there was lightening out.

CRACK! The lightening finally hit the main mast, it shuddered and split straight in two, the wood splintered and cracked, as it fell it burst into flame, the net and Tyler came down. Tyler heard a quieter more muffled crack as he landed on the deck, he screamed as pain shot up his leg, the net landing on top of him.

"Tyler! Are you okay!" Clair ran over, holding Jenna, she moved her to one arm and tried to pull the net off. She swore and pulled a knife out of her pocket and flipped out the blade.

"NO! God, I think it's broken, my ankle is BROKEN!" He screamed as a wave ran over the deck, moving his foot. His head spun, the boat moved and his ankle was twisted by another wave. He screamed, his head was pounding, his ankle felt like it was on fire, like someone was ripping it off, he screamed again, and blacked out, the wind howling in his ears.

******************************************************************

"I think I just ran into something!" Shouted Bolt, he reached up and felt the large wall that had come out of nowhere.

"What is it?" Cella asked, she walked over to where he was standing and saw something solid and white appear inches away from her nose, she barely stopped in time to avoid it.

Star walked straight into it, Rose with him. "It's a wall. A WHITE wall, in the middle of a freakin snowstorm!" He yelled, aggravated.

Rose was being more logical. "Why don't we try going around it? There were houses on the map, and I honestly don't care if anyone lives here, this stupid storm has been getting worse and worse by the minuite." She began to feel her way around, and soon found another side. A few minutes later they were inside.

"Oh thank goodness, a fireplace, and wood!" Star said as he looked around the small house.

Rose quickly bent down and pulled off her boots, releasing his hand. "I'll start a fire in a minute." She smiled at the small house, without the wind it was warmer.

"Great, I guess that it's just your typical house, not bad." Said Cella as she wandered around, there were only five rooms if you counted the living room/kitchen. "Bathroom, a bedroom, computers….. Hey! Come in here, there's loads of food!" She called.

Rose joined the other two in fallowing her call, and soon found herself in a room overstocked with cans of ravioli and boxes of cerial. She turned around and saw something taped to the door. "There's a note." She pointed it out to the others.

" 'To all travelers' Well, we fit that category. 'You may use anything here, please just make sure to leave everything as you saw it before entering, and do not download anything on the computers. Take your trash with you, or burn it, and make sure that all fires are out when leaving. Take no more than you need though, keep in mind that others will be coming this way and may need a place to stay when the snowstorms get bad. From a friend.' Whoever owns this house is extremely considerate." Star read through the note again, then nodded. He was slightly suspicious of this friend.

"Look at this, someone must have started something a while ago." Bolt was looking inside of a large empty can, there were envelopes inside.

"A lot of them have names and dates on them, look." Cella picked up one of them. "Erik Hendricks, January third, two-thousand… something, I can't read the rest of the date, he wrote it out." She read the front of the envelope. "That means that no one has been out here for a while. Look at these, some of them are from even earlier. Who just buys a random house and leaves it open to travelers?" She asked as she went through the envelopes.

"This one is open, I'm going to read it." Bolt pulled out one of the envelopes and pulled out the letter before anyone could stop him. "Relax, it's meant to be read, says so in the first line." He scanned the paper.

"What does it say?" Rose asked, watching him.

"For all to read. Dear friend, I found this place by chance, and am extremely grateful, I have been wandering around outside for hours. I stayed here for a week, waiting for the snowstorms to subside, and left with a new outlook on life. I believe that if more people in this world could trust others as blindly as you have, it would be a better place. I have included money for what I used, and I have given a list of what I used so that you can purchase more when you need to. To all who have read this, if you would like to write a thank you note, while I was returning from Snowpoint I dropped off three boxes of envelopes and some paper, they're behind the cereal, along with a box of pens. I know that not everyone who stops here is going to be honest, but I hope that they at least know that they should be thankful. From a grateful traveler." Bolt looked up, and shook his head. "This was written ten years ago." He folded the paper back up and placed it into the yellowing envelope.

"Yeah, but whoever owns this place has been back, none of this is past it's expiration date." Star had been going through the food.

"Then why haven't they read the letters?" Rose asked, going through the sealed envelopes.

"He hasn't been back, someone else is stocking this place, or he doesn't like thank yous." Cella grabbed a can off the shelf. "Either way, why don't we start a fire and eat something, I'm starving."

******************************************************************

Sheridan watched them, from behind a window, on the one side of the house that blocked the wind. "You are soft." He laughed, knowing that nothing could hear him over the wind. "You make some friends and you forget how to watch your back."

He dug his claws into the windowpane, growling as he watched a morph he hadn't been told about begin to make one of those little camp popcorns over the Charizard Morphs tail. He pressed harder into the wood, splintering it, as they all laughed. "I'll have to get you alone then, that will be the easiest way. Maybe tonight, when they're all asleep, I'll kill you quick, quiet, and they'll find you laying in a puddle of your own blood."

******************************************************************

Thomas poked at the embers of the fire with a stick, causing tiny sparks to fly into the air. He was sitting on a log outside a tent, his sleeping bag was laying on the ground a couple of feet away. When they had arrived in Slateport he'd gone and bought and a sleeping bag for himself, the tent belonged to Ashley and Sam. They had walked along route one-hundred-ten for a while until Sam was tired and Ashley couldn't carry her anymore, she wouldn't let him touch her. He stiffened as he heard a rustle, this was a clearing that had been used by trainers often, the logs and fire pit made that obvious, but right now was the off season for travelers in Hoenn, right now Kanto and Johto were the hotspots. "Hello?"

Mewtwo watched Thomas, staring at the sparks he sent flying. He knew that if he was going to talk to him, he had to do it now. He took a deep breath and took a step forward, he winced as a branch brushed against him and the man in the clearing called out. Mewtwo carefully stepped out into the small clearing, and locked eyes on the man sitting there. "You know me."

Thomas was barely able to spit out a "yes." He stared in shock at the Pokemon that was standing in front of him, one that he'd thought he'd have to search for for months before he'd even get a trail.

"You were looking for me." Mewtwo said, watching Thomas. He could feel what was going through his head right now, mostly shock, excitement, one that surprised him and Thomas was jealousy. Mewtwo walked over to a log across from the fire, and sat down. "So, camp counselor, creator of morphs, and son of the crazy guy that made me."

Thomas blinked a couple of times, ran a hand through his graying hair, then laughed. "I'm not fit to counsel a Pichu. I was looking for you, looks like you found me."

"Yes. I thought that it would be interesting for both of us, you know more about me than any other human, and you created the morphs in quite a similar way to how I was." Mewtwo was still carefully keeping tabs on Thomas feelings, and found that slight pang of jealousy again.

"What do you want? Your blueprints? It's not like they really exist anymore." Thomas was slightly confused, and still couldn't wrap his head around the fact that he was having a conversation with this Pokemon.

Mewtwo shook his head. "What I want, what a question. I don't honestly know. You were the one looking for me." He truly didn't know anymore, he knew that there wasn't anything that Thomas couldn't tell him that he hadn't seen in the quick scan of his thoughts and memories. His need to find and talk to the human in front of him suddenly seemed like an extremely useless and unnecessary waste of time.

******************************************************************

Star sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, staring out at the mass of white. He was in the room that had a couple of computers in it, they looked like the kind of old PCs that Pokécenters used to have, other than the computers there was a window, a few chairs, and that was it. He stood up off of the floor and walked out into the living room with a sigh, as long as he couldn't sleep he could at least go talk to Bolt. He was awake in the room where they had found the food, he'd said that as long as he wasn't going to sleep he would write a letter. Star yawned and walked over to the window that was over the kitchen sink, the only thing that separated the living room and kitchen was a table that they had dragged closer to the fire. He stretched his wings, then sighed. "I get to sleep in a house for once, and I don't get an ounce of sleep."

"Hey Star, me neither." Rose said from her cot, she'd insisted on using it and staying in the living room by the fire. She was sitting on it, her elbows on her knees and her hands on either side of her face, he fingers strung through her hair.

"Hey, I was going to talk to Bolt, since he said he'd be awake. Why can't you sleep?" He walked over and stood behind the cot, watching her. She was flicking her tail back and forth and staring at the fire.

"Bolt is the only one asleep, Cella came in here a minute ago growling about people and emotions, then she looked at me for a few seconds and stalked off. Bolt is asleep with four pieces of paper stuffed into an envelope, apparently writing puts him to sleep, or he's just being irritating." She sighed and removed her fingers from her hair. She turned and looked up at him.

"Mind if I sit down, since Bolt ditched reality and Cella doesn't sound very sociable?" He motioned to the cot.

Rose nodded and moved over, letting her tail swing down, automatically turning it up so that it didn't set the floor on fire. "Go ahead, it's not like I'm sleeping on it."

He sat down and sighed, staring into the dying embers. "So why can't you sleep?"

"I think all of everything caught up with me, now that it's had time to. My parents are dead Star, and I've killed people. I've been ripped away from my home, thrown into what is basically a prison, electrocuted for telling a joke, and escaped in a plane. I didn't even know what a plane was, and I still don't really have any clue. I'm inside a house. I hadn't even seen a house before except once, and we flew over it, in the plane. When did the world get so freaking messed up?" She leaned against him, and just stared at the glowing embers. She wondered if he was okay with her there, and shut her eyes, just thinking about him.

Star instinctively wrapped an arm around her shoulders, just above her wings, and was surprised at how natural it was, then worried that she would be uncomfortable with it. He turned his head slightly to look at her, and she had her eyes closed. He ran his hand through her hair, then let it rest between her wings. "I don't know, and it's going to take a lot to fix it."

******************************************************************

Sheridan watched from outside as Star wrapped his arm around the Charizard morph, keeping low so that he wouldn't be noticed unless someone looked directly at him. He just glared with pure hate at this movement of affection, his wings went rigid and he began to ruin the siding by sinking his claws into it, dragging them through the white painted metal. He ground his teeth at him, this child who had taken everything from him.

"Fine, I'll wait." He growled, a new plan forming in his head. "I'll wait, and then, then I will kill her, and you will watch. Then, I will hurt you, and leave you bleeding." Sheridan smiled, removing his claws from the siding, and walking around the house. He moved into the woods just a few feet away, they were shelter enough from the wind. He pulled off his pack, it was small, he didn't need much, and he unzipped it. Inside he found what he would need, it was small, but accurate. The black metal shone for a second, then disappeared back into the bag. "I will leave him bleeding."


	13. Chapter 13

Right, well, i decided to just cut the thing in half, because the last part of this is shaping up to be more than Ten pages, and i've already got eighteen. I know that it cuts off at the end, sort of abruptly without a proper end to the chapter, but that was never ment to be the end of the chapter in the first place, and i couldn't let myself leave you guys at another cliffhanger. Chapter fourteen continues where this left off, and i promise that you won't have to wait six months for it, since it's already half done. I also have a feeling that several people are either going to be pissed at me for the first part of this chapter or morbidly pleased, either way, keep reading, and don't flame me, and don't congradulate me, cause i'm not frickin proud of it. (This is eighteen pages, about. And if you find any spelling mistakes, tell me please.)

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Chapter Thirteen

**Day five of freedom, More Freaking Trees**

"Mew."

The Pokemon who's name had just been said jumped slightly. He quickly turned around and saw Celebi. "What are you doing here?" He couldn't think of anything else to say.

"I need you, something in the forest." Celebi said this fast, and seemed edgy.

"I can't go now! I'm trailing Ash until Mewtwo gets back and he's leaving now." Mew wondered what it could be, there had never been an issue that Celebi couldn't handle himself. When there was he never asked for help, usually getting himself hurt.

"We won't be gone that long, he'll still be in the city for… a while." Celebi began to fly off.

"Fine, relax. I'm coming." Mew left the branch of the tree he was sitting on, fallowing Celebi into the forest. "What's the emergency?"

"Just fallow me." Celebi disappeared behind a tree, Mew had to work to keep up.

"You'd better not be joking around here, Mewtwo is coming back today and we can't waste anymore time chasing people, everything is starting to align how we want it. If we don't get more help soon we'll be out of luck." Mew was a little irritated, and Celebi seemed nervous.

Suddenly the time travel Pokemon stopped and turned to Mew, there was dread and sadness in it's eyes. "You're going to hate me."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Mew was confused, and had every right to be under the circumstances.

"You'll find out in a minute, by now it's too late to stop it, even if you teleport." Celebi had a look on his face like he wanted to throw up, which wasn't far from the truth.

"What-" Suddenly Mew heard the crack of a gun. His fur stood on end, and he looked at Celebi in shock. Mew was afraid that he already know the answer, but he asked anyway. "Celebi… Who got shot?"

Celebi shook his head, his small body going limp. "You're more important, we couldn't let you-" Mew was already gone before Celebi had gotten through the fifth word.

Mew stared at the scene before him, there was a man, standing over the body, a body with ridiculous blue hair and wearing sunglasses, a body with a hysterical Pikachu pawing at it. There was blood trickling out of a hole in his head.

"It is not something that we can control. The humans are not our responsibility." Mew hung his head and let his tail drop, using only enough energy to keep himself afloat. The voice entering his mind belonged to Arceus.

"You let our only chance… go, he was our last hope." Mew said.

"We need you, the morphs are not our problem. It will be sorted out by itself." Arceus growled.

"They are our problem!" Mew yelled, rightening himself. In their minds he did the equivalent of looking Arceus straight in the eye. "If we do not intervene they will kill themselves! They will all end up dead! They are our problem, they are part Pokemon, and Pokemon are who we're here to protect!"

Arceus stared down at the little pink cat. "It will be sorted out by itself, there is nothing we can do to stop it. Talk to Mewtwo, then stop trying to change things that we cannot control." At that he cut the conversation, and left Mew alone.

Mew watched as a crowd of people gathered around Ash. Someone picked up his pokedex and the man who had done the shooting was nowhere to be seen. Soon cameras and news people would be there, and police would be keeping the cameras and people away. Mew contacted Mewtwo, and just let the picture in front of him go across.

"It will sort itself out. I know." Mewtwo sent a conversation almost identical to the one Mew had just had to him.

Mewtwo was currently sitting in a small cave he had found at the edge of some beach. He sighed and dropped the connection. There was nothing to say. He stared out at the ocean for a few minutes, watching the water, not moving. Suddenly he stood up and jumped into the air and set off towards Kanto. His hope had died, in more than one way.

******************************************************************

Thomas let his fingers fly across the keyboard on his laptop, it was raining outside and the café they were in was dark, thunder rumbled from overhead. There was a television buzzing quietly in the corner with some irritated woman standing in the rain that had been falling for the past hour.

"How long are you going to be?" Growled Ashley, tapping her fingertips on the table.

"Relax, no one around here is going to see you as long as you keep your hood up. Why don't you get something to eat, just order whatever you want." He stared at the file in front of him, scanning it carefully. He couldn't let any of the information go unnoticed.

"I'm not hungry." She glared at the computer in front of her.

"That's a lie. Wake Sam up so that she can eat something too, really, get whatever you want. We aren't going anywhere until this clears up, I can't afford to get this wet, and walking around in the rain will just get us sick." he opened another page and began to type quickly.

"The rain doesn't get you sick, it's just annoying and wet." She placed a hand on the child laying in the booth next to her.

He peered over his laptop at her, sighing. "Not the rain specifically, but you would be cold and wet. When you are cold you're system works harder to keep you warm, leaving you more open to getting sick. How do you think so many people catch ammonia?"

She stared at him for a second, grinding her teeth. "Just shut up."

"Happily, I'm trying to find out where my son could have possibly gone and how to rewire the main computer system in that base that you want to get into." He opened the blueprints for the building, then continued hacking into it's computers. "I think it's going to involve getting directly into their system, their may be an outlet I can hook into outside though."

She let out a low growl, then picked up one of the menus sitting on the edge of the table. She scanned it for a second, then nudged Sam gently. "Wake up."

She blinked a couple of times and yawned, then she caught sight of her surroundings. "Are we there?"

"No, we're in a restaurant, it's raining outside. Do you want anything to eat?" Ashley pointed to the menu.

"Yes!" Sam grabbed it and opened it up. It looked giant in her tiny hands.

"Thomas said we could order whatever we wanted." she glanced up at the computer he was sitting behind again, wishing that he would even wince at the fact that he had said this. He didn't even blink, still scanning his files.

******************************************************************

The dark face of the mountain loomed above them, the sun making the snow covering it shine. "We are not climbing over that." Cella objected.

"Why not?" Asked Bolt, looking it. He could see places where thin roads led up the mountain, it would be easy enough to climb if they could find one.

"Because I'm great at trees, but if you want me on a giant slushy rock you are definitely going to have a hard time getting me there." She growled, folding her ears back.

"Then we'll just go without you." He said, as he leaned against one of the trees that lined the small snowy clearing. He glanced through the trees, watching a murkrow. He was pretty sure that it had been fallowing them for a while now.

"We are not leaving without anyone. And the giant slushy rock will probably be covered in humans, so we aren't going to climb on it anyway." Said Star. He yawned and stretched out his wings, looking up at the sky, it was still covered in a layer of clouds, but the snow had stopped.

"We'll probably have to do a little climbing at some point, the woods around the mountain aren't on this map, except something that says there's supposed to be trails. I think if we can find one of those we should take it, if it's not on a map fewer travelers will be on them." Rose said, scanning the area as if one of the trails would be hidden by the snow covered trees.

"So, west or east?" asked Bolt, looking at the map in her hands, pulling it down a little so he could see.

"Bolt, it won't do you any good to read that upside down, but I think we should head west, towards Canalave." Cella pointed at the city on the map, tapping it.

"So a busy city that leaves us at a dead end if we can't get onto a boat? I hate to break it to you, but these identity cards aren't exactly going to keep people from figuring us out if we have to spend time on a boat with them." Bolt said, watching as Cella rolled her eyes the entire time.

"I have to say that he has a point, but I think that you have an idea, care to share with us?" Star said to her as he took a look at the map from behind Rose, subconsciously placing one hand on her shoulder.

"I wouldn't have suggested it if I didn't. Bolt, have you ever heard of a morph named Vincent?" She turned to him, irritated when he didn't show any surprise.

"Yeah, was captured, escaped, and is now untouchable. Runs that boat company thing…" he immediately shut his mouth. Knowing the story was one thing, pokemorph escape stories were circulated throughout the rocket bases all the time, but knowing what happened after they escaped wasn't so popular, unless they were dead.

Cella smiled slightly, but didn't point out that he knew more than he should, knew more than her. She had just been running on hope that he'd actually gotten a transportation business off the ground. "Exactly, he's untouchable, and so are his boats for some reason. Tyler and I used to listen to him talk about sailing on the ocean all the time, after he was captured by the rockets he escaped, and got some chip out of his arm that the rockets had been putting in him when he got out. If we can find one of his boats, we'll get passage for free, and we'll be able to remain out of sight from most of the other passengers."

Bolts eyes got a little wider, and his breath caught in his throat, "What did you say about a chip!" He choked out.

"There was a chip, in Vincent, he got it out because he figured that it was a tracking device." She was beginning to get worried, the look on Bolts face was equivalent to someone who had just been told that they were going to die, or worse.

"Oh god this is not good. Bad, bad bad bad…." He took off his backpack and began digging through it.

"Bolt, what's wrong?" Rose watched as he dug furiously through the pockets until he found a small first aid kit.

"THE CHIPS! Oh God, they use the chips as tracking devices, I forgot about them, I don't have one, but you guys might. This is bad, bad bad bad bad!" He sat on the ground and dug his fingers into the snow, crushing it into the mold of his hands.

"Bolt, it would be much more helpful if you would take a deep breath and explain this to us. They use chips as tracking devices?" Star said, rolling up the map and sticking it one of the packs. He hadn't seen Bolt this freaked out before.

"Right. Team rocket developed small chips, like computer chips, that are immune to Pokemon moves. The only ways to shut them off without taking them out is by either having strong electric currents from an outside source run thorugh the exact spot where it's at, or by using a high frequency sound wave to shut them down. These chips are tracking devices, if they aren't shut off, we're going to be found. They probably don't care too much about us now, but they're going to kill us eventually if we can't keep a few steps ahead of them." He'd returned to his normal cold manner, saying this as if he were commenting on the weather.

"That would explain a lot. How do we figure out if they're in us?" Star questioned, watching as bolt went through the first aid kit.

"The electromagnitism in the chips is strong enough that it could be found with a magnet, or running a soft current through someones body until you can find the place that the electricity is attracted to. Finding the chip with the current, if it's a light one, won't do anything, but if you try to shut it down it's possible to receive major nerve damage to the area it's implanted, and if the current runs through the wrong areas of your body it could kill you." He suddenly stopped rifleing through the kit, shut it, and shoved it back in the bag.

"Bolt, I know that you've been in that base your whole life, but I don't think that kind of knowledge would normally be given to any morph." Rose watched as Bolt suddenly froze, his body stiffening ans his face going stone blank again.

"No, it isn't. Nor is it any of your buissness." He took a deep breath and zipped up his backpack, placing it on his sholders. "There's a path about four feet in."

"He's hiding something." Hissed Cella quietly.

"Cella, he may be hiding something, but unless it could harm us we have no buissness knowing what it is." Star walked through the trees, pushing aside branches.

"Rose?" Cella turned towards her.

"It looks like whatever he's hiding hurts him. He never mentions how he grew up in that place. He doesn't want to talk about it anymore than you want to talk about being tortured." Rose sighed as Cella winced, picking up her pack.

"You're right. It's stupid of me to pry, but you heard him that night, and now he won't sleep at all until he thinks we're all asleep. He says he doesn't need it. I can tell he doesn't physically, but it's like he gets something out of it, more than just rest." She began walking with Rose down the path that was, just like Bolt had said, about four feet into the woods.

"I think you're just reading too much into it. He's probably still paranoid from living in that place for so long. If I were him I wouldn't have slept either. I wonder why that is though, that he doesn't need sleep. It's a bit odd." Rose watched the trail ahead, keeping an eye on two males in front of them.

"Probably a disorder of some kind." Cella stated flatly.

"You lost me." Rose flared out her wings for a second, then snapped them shut back onto her back again.

"Sleep disorder. There's probably something wrong with his brain that has shut down his need for sleep, just not his ability to do it."

"First bolt is talking about some weird kind of chip, now you're talking about disorders. Why don't we move on to a normal subject and let the things that I don't understand wait until a better time." They were catching up to Bolt and Star.

"She has a good point. Talking about science stuf is past me. You and Bolt can probably have fun talking about that though." Star turned around, walking backwards.

"Or not. Ask me how to get a tracking device out, I'll give you a detailed explanation on how. Talk to me about brains, and I'm asleep, most likely on purpose." Bolt didn't seem thrilled with the idea.

"So how long is this path supposed to be anyway?" Cella questioned, choosing geography as a better subject.

"I have no clue, just that fallowing the paths should take us out to Eterna. It probably cuts off some of the time it would take if we were crossing the mountain. Bolt, can you see far enough to judge how long this path is?" Rose looked at the back of his head, one of his ears seemed to twitch in slight irritation.

"Trees trees and more trees, a couple rocks and utterly terrified Pokemon. People don't come this way often, it's rare to see anything but the native Pokemon out here I'm sure. So we're terrifying anything smaller than us, and anything larger feels it safer to keep out of our way." He turned his head slowly as he said all of this, his eyes flashing yellow.

"That's a little creepy." Stated Cella, then she laughed as Bolt missed a turn and slammed into a tree.

"It has it's drawbacks, I never exactly got to play around with this ability." He growled, rubbing his forehead.

"So everything is staying off the path just because we're here? You'd think they'd want to know more about us." Rose looked around at the trees, wondering how many pairs of eyes watched their progression through the forest.

"They would rather leave us alone until they've made sure we're not a threat, or trainers. Most of the Pokemon out here I'm sure are strong, and if they ganged up on us we'd probably be in trouble, but they aren't sure. It's best to just leave them alone as long as they do the same for us." Star was still walking backwards, somehow managing to stay on the path.

"That's annoying." Cella stared at him, his feet keeping a beat even though he couldn't see where he was going.

"You're full of complaints today, what's got you? It's like you just need something to be creepy or irritating." Rose turned to Cella, then watched Star. She had to admit to herself, it was slightly irritating, but she quickly lost her train of thought.

Cella sighed. "I don't know. Sorry guys," She shook her head, making her ears flap a little. "I just feel nervous I guess."

Star turned around, walking normally, looking up through the trees. "It looks like the sun's come out finally. Maybe we'll actually get out of these woods in time to enjoy it."

Bolt looked up, and smiled. "Maybe. I'll tell you guys if I see a clearing." He stared into the forest, that Murkrow was definitely fallowing them.

***********************************************************************

"Leah to Home, I've spotted three travelers leaving The Rainy Café, sending data now." She stared down at the three, she was positive it was them, but she had to keep cover until it was confirmed with the Home.

"Home to Leah, this is Andrew, image confirmed, it's them. You may procede. Be careful though, that's Thomas down there, and we don't know what to expect." Leah nodded to herself, then began decent. She quickly landed a bit in front of the group and began walking towards them. She stopped a few feet ahead and waited while they approached.

"Hello!" She called and waved as they stopped a few feet away. She ran up to them.

"Who are you?" Ashley growled as she crouched, ready to attack.

"Oh relax would you? I was sent from home, Andrew you know? He figured that it would be a good idea to send a guide so you didn't get lost in the woods." She smiled, whiping her tail and sending a slight breeze over their heads.

"Oh. Thank you then." Ashley relaxed, then smiled.

Sam tugged on ashleys shirt, staring up at her. "Ashley, who's that?" She pointed to Leah.

"She's going to show us where to go, so we can get to that place I told you about. Why don't you aske her her name?" Ashley crouched down and picked her up.

"What's your name Flygon girl?" Sam asked.

"I'm Leah, and you must be Sam. Nice to meet you all." She looked at all three, pausing for a moment on Thomas face. He was supposed to be the bad guy, part of team rocket. He didn't look like she'd expected.

"So how'd you end up with Tylers group?" Asked Thomas. Ashley gave him a glare that basically told him to shut the hell up.

"Why would you want to know?" She asked, slightly uncomfortable. He was way to relaxed.

"Ashley's been ignoring me since I made her get lunch." He shrugged.

Leah turned to Ashley "Are you sure he's the guy who created our blueprints?"

"Unfortunately yes. He wants to help with the Rocket base project that you guys are working on." They began walking down the path.

"Help us or kill us?" She glared at him.

"Help. Believe it or not, I don't hate you guys, and it wouldn't make sense for me to." He rolled his eyes at her glare.

"Why wouldn't it? All of the other rockets want us dead." Leah said.

"It wouldn't make sense because I spent a good portion of my life figuring out how to make your blueprints, and getting them to work. When you spend that much time on something it's hard to hate it." He stretched his arms above his head.

"The way said that was pretty much creepy. And what about everyone else wanting us dead, you used to work for them." She stared at him. Why was he so relaxed about everything she'd said?

"Yes. And now I don't. You do the math." He raised his eyebrows at her.

"Not that this hasn't been enlightening at all, but we have travelers at twelve-o-clock." Said Ashley, pointing with her free arm.

"That's alright, we need to turn right here anyway." She grabbed Ashleys and Thomas arms and led them into the woods.

"That was close." Muttered Thomas under his breath as the two people walked by.

"Only for us, no one would have paid any attention to you." Glared Leah.

"Really, would you stop trying to be mean to me? It's annoying and uncalled for. Those two work for team rocket as scouts and theives, I would have been in as much trouble as the rest of you."

"I doubt it. Team Rocket wants you alive, not us." Ashley said, a slight smile on her face.

"I don't believe that this is really a proper conversation for the company we're in." Said Thomas, seeing that Sam was watching them.

"Look, a combee!" Leah pointed to it, floating over one of the branches above them. "You don't see many around here, there's probably a hive nearby."

"Or it's on it's own." Thomas said.

"Why would it be alone?" Sam stared up at the bug Pokemon.

"It's a female, female Combee evolve into Vespiquen, so it was most likely kicked out of the hive before it could evolve. There can only be one Vespiquen in a hive."

The Pokemon flew in closer, its wings buzzing, then disappeared behind a tree.

"Mom had one of those," Sam stared at the place wehre the bug Pokemon had gone, tears welled up in her eyes. "I miss Mommy and Daddy." The tears welled over and began to slide down her face, she shook slightly as she tried to hold in her sobs.

Ashley bent down and wrapped her arms around her. "It's okay, shhh, let it out, it's okay."

Sam wrapped her arms around Ashleys neck and burried her face in her shoulder. "It's not okay! They're gone and they're not going to come back! No one can bring them back, I miss Mommy… I miss Daddy. I want Mommy and Daddy back…" She sobbed into her shoulder as Ashley picked her up, slightly rocking her side to side, stroking her hair.

Leah motioned for them to continue and they walked in silence until sam was asleep. Ashley watched the other two as they walked, noticing that Thomas keps running his fingers through his hair and looking at Sam, then he would turn away and clench his fists. Finally she got fed up with it. "Thomas, what the hell is your problem? You've been fidgety since we saw that stupid Bug Pokemon!"

Leah turned to them. "He's probably planning how to kill us all without involving Sam."

Thomas glared at him, a hateful look on his face. "If you really have to know, I'm extremely conflicted, and before you start making all kinds of ridiculous statements that I'm a traitor, you may want to hear why."

He continued to glare at Leah. "Fine, I won't go on about how I knew you were a traitor and admitting confliction prooves it untill you're done with your petty explenation."

"Good. I'm conflicted because I feel like Sams parents death is my fault." He looked at her, and sighed.

"So you sent the-" Leah started.

"Would you be quiet for more than twenty seconds? I didn't send that attack. I knew it was happening, but I couldn't do anything about it, or I would have. I didn't even know that humans were involved." Thomas shook his head, grinding his teeth.

"Okay, you can continue, whatever." Leah sighed, glaring at him.

"I feel like it's my fault because I created Morphs. I feel like if I hadn't created them, then her parents wouldn't have died. She would be happy and carefree, playing with them and their Pokemon, waiting until she was old enough to be a trainer." He ran his fingers through his hair again, shutting his eyes for a second.

"So what's wrong with that? If you hadn't created us, she would be." Ashley stroked Sams hair again.

"It's wrong because thinking about you not existing is like killing you, it's like wondering how the world would be if no Fire type Pokemon existed. Except it's worse."

"How is it worse? If we didn't exist, none of this mess would have happened in the first place. No one would have died for our sake, and since we wouldn't exist, we wouldn't have ever been in pain. What's wrong with that?"

Leah stared at Ashley as if she'd turned into a toaster. "I think you're both insane."

He ignored Leahs comment. "It's wrong because you're alive, you think, you talk, you're born and die. The only difference between my species and yours is the fact that you look different and most of you can use moves. It's wrong because you're people."

"We aren't human though. That's why we're a threat, and you're not. We're almost there, I'll radio Andrew." Leah flipped open the Devon Scope, and quickly dialed a number."

**************************************************************************

"It's starting to get dark, we should find a place to camp." Bolt said, looking up at the sky. They had been walking along a dirt path for a while now, the woods had been replaced by bushes and thorns that had choked out anything that could have grown there. They could see the side of the mountains rise next to them, creating shadows as the sun began to sink.

"There isn't any place around here, there's too many thorns, our tents would get torn." Cella unnecessarily pointed out.

"There has to be somewhere, if other people have taken these trailes they would have needed to camp too, we're close to Eterna, but not close enough." Star said, rolling up the map for the sixth time.

"We might have to turn around and go back until we find something. What do you guys think?" Bolt asked, he hadn't seen any areas that looked good for camping though, not for miles.

"I don't know, the last thing we saw that would be good was miles back. If we go back it will be dark before we get there, if we keep moving forward we still have a chance to find a good place." Rose said, looking at the sinking sun.

"We should keep going, I think there's something ahead." Cella said, she smiled.

They walked for a few more minuites, until Cella told them to stop. "Look, there's a path that goes up here."

"Why should we take it, what if we just end up getting lost in the mountains?" Bolt growled.

"Relax, if we don't find the place after ten minuites, the we'll go back." She said, already walking.

**************************************************************************

Sheridan crouched behind the rocks above the campsite they'd set up, the little psychic brat had been right, there was a flat outcropping of rock that was perfect for camping. Impossible to see from below too, so he'd have no problems taking them out. "It's perfect, they have no way to defend themselves, except moves."

He smiled as they sat down on the ground around a small fire that they'd gotten started. They wouldn't know what hit them. Suddenly a Murkrow landed on a rock next to him. "Ahhh, hello Rox, what did you find out?"

"More of the same, the Luxray morph can see through things, but is a bit clumsey with it. Your son has gotten extremely relaxed around his new friends though." She cackled at this. Her master looked pleased.

"Good, that's great. I can't have you flying around the whole time I'm doing this though, so return. And stop calling him my son." He held up the red and white sphere, which quickly absorbed the Pokemon.

"Now I just have to wait."

************************************************************************

Thomas looked around, the room they were in was large, with several computers and other macines hooked to extension cords. There was even a clothes dryer. "Yeah, it'd be better if we had a Rotom." Andrew said, half a frown on his face.

"It's fine, how did you get all of this set up without anyone noticing? The electricity has to come from somewhere." Thomas was impressed.

"We have a few generators, but mostly it's our own efforts, we do have a few things hooked up to the Gym in Fortree, like the computers, but other than that we make our own power." He was pleased with the impressed look on Thomas face, even if he still wasn't completely convinced of his aliance.

"That's impressive, how do you make that work?" He was glad to talk about anything but the suspecion that several members had for him.

"Ten humans at a time ride stationary bikes that we managed to rig, and we have two Morphs and two Pokemon who can use electric moves send a steady current of electricity through all three secret bases. At night we turn everything off, and we don't use electricity to cook very often. Once a week we charge the generators to full power."

"So you get exercise and power. If the rest of the world could cooperate like this, electric bills wouldn't be an issue. How do you get enough food though?" Just keep the topic on them.

"Hunting and gathering mostly. Every human here over eighteen has a job in Fortree or Lillycove, there are a few who work in Mauville, and send money via Pokemon when they can. We worry more about clothes and sleeping arrangements than food here. That's why we had to make two more bases, too many morphs, too many people." Andrew sat down at one of the computers.

"Oh." Thomas couldn't think of anything else to say.

"We don't mind, but it was getting crowded, and we had to make an estimate on how many morphs we're going to add tomarrow. We keep getting people because of this one website too. The webmaster is a genuis, he helped me get the basic blueprints for rocket bases, and there's all sorts of things on morphs. I even got permission from Tyler to give him a section on this place. You can see if you want, you'd probably just hack it if we said no anyway."

"You all have such a low opinion of me. I've already seen the site anyway, your plan is stupid and dangerous, but I have a friend I need to get out of there." He knew he was being reckless again.

"How could you possibly know about this site? No one from team rocket can get in, weather they've quit or not."

"Yes, and only someone from team rocket would know how to block all of it's members. I had a hell of a time making that work you know." He smiled, looking at Andrew. All he wanted to do was get Tilla out, to get her and Bolt back together he hoped that he could just get that across.

"Why the hell are you messing with me? If you made this stupid site then why wouldn't you just tell everyone here? Instead of being held under suspecion?" Andrew stared him in the eyes, this website was what had made them, kept them alive, helped them gain money.

"I don't want people to like me, they don't even have to respect me, I just want to get Tilla out of that rocket base, then go find my son. Most of the members are bent on hating me, and I understand that, so If you want to keep using that website, you can't tell anyone. Ashley is the only other person here who knows that I made it. So can I help with that raid or not?" He was aware that he probably could have said that better, but let it go.

"Fine, you can come, whatever. Fly ahead on your Skarmory and casue a distraction. Find whoever you're looking for, just keep us a secret." He knew that it didn't matter what he said, Thomas would go anyway.

"Thanks, after I find her I'm going to leave though. Giovanni cares too much about finding me, and I don't want to put anyone here in any more danger than I have to."

"What about her? If you find her what are you going to do?"

"She can come with me or stay if she likes, I don't mind either way. What would be the point of getting her out if she still didn't have any free will?"

"That's a good point. It's going to be lights out in an hour, if I were you I'd get set up, you can sleep in the empty base or in your tent, either way, watch yourself. We might just be kids, but a lot of us have a lot of hate, and good reason for it." Andrew nodded, then watched as Thomas left the base.

"I hope he finds his friend, then gets the hell out of here before he gets himself killed. Any way he dies will be justice in the eyes of half the people here."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Yeah, killing a character, even one that wasn't origionally your own, hurts like freaking hell. The ones i'm not attatched to, or only knew for a short time, or were written to DIE origionally (See Failed) Are easier, and die a lot better (DUH). Ash has been a staple in the pokemon world (Even if he's disgustingly cliche, and pretty much set the standard for what most writers here call Mary Sue.) for a pretty freakin long time, So killing him was not fun, but for some reason that's what happened, and i'm not changing it, and i'm not going to sappily bring him back to life or some crap like that. That's not my style, once there's a bullet in someones head, they don't come back.

Review, and don't forget to check my profile on Sundays and Saturdays, i try to update it Regularialy, although i fail often.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

**Windstorm**

Rose sat on the cot, staring at the wall of the tent. Cella had fallen asleep a long time ago. She sighed as the shadows danced because of her flame. Wind howled against the tent, beating against the rock face that they had tied the tents to. She turned around, facing toward Stars and Bolts tent, wondering if they were asleep.

Star stuck his head out of the flap, looking around. "Just wind, no snow or anything."

Bolt sat cross legged on his sleeping bag, his ear twitching in irritation. "Why do you have that open? We've spent enough nights cold, leave that shut."

"I'm going outside for a while, I need to just go think or something. I won't go far." He slid out of the tent, and zipped it shut before Bolt could reply. The wind felt good against his face, he kept his wings folded tight against hip body. The darkness washed over him like a blanket, besides the winds it was actually almost peaceful.

He walked to the edge of the cliff, then turned to face towards the wall of rock their tents were tied to. The wind slammed against his back as he looked up at it, then he spread his wings and let the wind carry him. Each flap of his wings let out a new note as the air rushed against them.

Rose jumped slightly as she listened to the howling wind, hearing a strange sound jump in with the rushing air. She looked down at Cella, still sleeping, then stood and opened the flap to their tent. She folded her wings tight against her body and went outside, quietly zipping up their tent. She looked around, listening for the music again.

She heard another note, slightly high pitched, and she looked up at the rock face, seeing a flash of green disappear behind it. "Star."

The wind batted against her wings as she opened them, they immediately caught in the wind, lifting her off the ground, straight towards the wall of rock. She angled straight up, clearing the wall and soaring over it, riding the wind. She hardly had to flap at all, the wind acted as a cushion under her wings, carrying her. She looked up at the sky, stars covered each inch, she angled left, then noticed an outcrop of rock fifty feet ahead.

Rose noticed Star standing there, his wings and tail were prominent in the light from the stars and moon. She slowed down, slightly bracing against the wind and angled downwards. The wind all but cut off as she slid past the rock face. She straightened them and went into a glide, letting her wings catch air so that she didn't go too fast.

She stepped onto the platform and shut her wings, smiling as he turned to her. "Nice landing."

"Thanks. A lot of it was just instinctive. I'm pretty good at flying for not having done it much." She watched him, noticing a slight frown on his face.

"I can go if you want, I just couldn't sleep."

"No, no, please don't go. You're fine, how did you know I was out here?" He watched as a stray breeze sent some of her hair across her face. He wondered if it had even been possible for him not to want her around.

"You're wings sing, sort of. I heard it and went outside, I didn't know that they could do that." At his voice her heart began to beat faster, and her blood rushed through her ears. It was nice to be out there alone.

He moved his hand brushed the hair out of her face, his heart suddenly sped up. He could feel every movement of the air around him. "It's the way they're shaped, my wings cut the wind, yours flow with it."

Rose stared as he brushed her hair out of her face, then stared into his eyes. "Yeah, I guess. Without all of the clouds you can really see the stars. It's beautiful out here."

"Yes you are." He whispered, sliding his hand to her back, pressing slightly. Rose leaned in closed and wrapped her arms around his neck, his lips brushed against hers. The blood rushed in Stars ears as they kissed, his heart pounding against his ribcage. Rose pressed up against him, shutting her eyes as she breathed in his scent. The night wrapped around them like a blanket, until it was torn away by the feeling of cold metal against Roses neck.

Suddenly Star felt Rose tense, her body went rigid, her breath caught in her throat, she let her arms fall from around his neck. Star kept his eyes shut, every thought going through his head was terrified, what was wrong? Was it him?

"Star." He heard Rose breathe, fear in her voice, her mouth still just centimeters from his. He heard a loud click, and opened his eyes.

"Hello." Sheridan said, he smirked at Stars shocked expression.

Star stared at him, it was almost a mirror image, except for a thin scar that crossed Sheridan's face, cutting from the top of his forehead down to the edge of his jaw. Then he noticed the gun. "What do you want?"

Star ground his teeth, glaring at the Morph in front of him. He took a deep breath, then slid his hand into Roses.

"It's my job, I've been hired to kill you. Actually, I wasn't really hired, I took the job on purpose. It was a great chance to find you, I recognized the name immediately." He was enjoying this, seeing the anger in Stars eyes.

He grinned, suddenly realizing that he was tearing everything apart, just when Star had felt like everything was coming together, he got to destroy it.

"Then move the damn gun to my head, and stay away from her." Star released her hand, breathing hard, anger coursing through his body. He couldn't risk getting her shot, he couldn't let her die. He spread his wings, and clenched his fists, digging his claws into his hands.

"Hmm." Sheridan brought his free hand up to his head, tapping his temple a couple times, looking mockingly thoughtful. "I don't know…"

Then he flashed his teeth and shoved Rose away from Star, throwing her to the ground. "Fine then, since I've made up my mind and I'm going to kill you all, you can go first." He still wanted to kill the girl first though, that would hurt him most.

"I think you're just a freaking psycho." Rose growled, her eyes flashing with fire.

Sheridan turned to her, glaring. "Why would you say that?" He asked, keeping the gun on Star. He knew that as long as he kept the gun on one of them neither would move.

"You're Stars dad, I'm guessing. You look almost exactly like him, of course, he's lacking in the evil psychopath department. You have problems." She was sitting up, her wings spread carefully to make it look like she'd been hurt. It wasn't hard, her back hurt like hell.

"Rose, are you okay?" Star watched her, concern in his eyes.

Sheridan turned back to him. "You're little girlfriend's just stalling, so she doesn't get you shot as soon. I think it's cute. Useless, but cute, cause you know what love is worth in the end? It's worth nothing, because in the end we all end up dead and in hell, alone. You think you've been living a fuc-"

Rose slammed her fist into his head, snarling. Her flame lit up the whole area, burning the air. Sheridan's finger slammed down the trigger of the gun.

The shot rang out, Rose screamed as the bullet flew. Star had braced himself as soon as he'd seen Rose getting up. And winced as the bullet sliced through his wing. He grabbed Sheridan's hand, twisting his wrist until he dropped the gun. "Get. The. Hell. Out. Of. MY LIFE!" he kneed him in the stomach.

Star forced all of his weight into throwing himself and Sheridan off the cliff. "Rose! Get back to the camp!"

She watched for a second as they freefell, then grabbed the gun and launched herself into the air, wincing as the wind slammed into her wings. She turned and landed on the rock wall, unable to fly. The wind had picked up even more. She looked down at the camp, knowing that it wasn't going to be a smooth landing.

Star spread his wings, pushing off of Sheridan and slicing through the air, his wings shrieked a high pitch, dust began to pick up off the ground. The wind shredded against his wings.

Sheridan shot up over the ledge, heading straight towards Star. He stretched out his claws, slashing at Stars face. Star dodged this and kicked him away again, he spun and sent wind whiping at Sheridans face. Sheridan snarled, and rushed towards Star, shoving them both out over the camp.

"What did I do to you!?" Star shouted, digging his claws into Sheridans chest as he tried to shove him away again. He held tighter and spun them around, adding force to the wind and slamming Star into the rock face.

Rose twisted in the air, watching. She needed to get down and get the other two. She folded her wings halfway, quickening her fall. The wind suddenly forced one of her wings open, sending her crashing into a tent.

Bolt quickly wriggled out of the flattened tent, glaring at Rose. "What the hell was that for!"

Rose shook her head and pointed up at the battle, Sheridan had just slammed Star into the rock again, Star slammed his fist into his nose. He suddenly released Star, who fell for a second, then grabbed Sheridans leg, digging in his claws.

"I think we should start packing then. Why don't you go wake up Cella?" Bolt ducked back into the ruined tent and dragged out the two sleeping bags and backpacks as Rose ran over to the other tent.

"CELLA!" She opened the flap and stepped into the tent, beginning to roll up her sleeping bag. "Get up! We have to move NOW!"

Cella jolted awake, staring at her. "Why, What happened?"

"Just start rolling up your bag, we have to get everything out of here now!" Rose shoved her sleeping bag into her backpack, then began to fold up the cot.

Cella went over and helped her get it into its case, then began to roll up her own sleeping bag. "Did Star and Bolt get everything in their tent put away?"

"Bolt's working on it, Star is a bit preoccupied at the moment." She grabbed her backpack and threw it on. "We have to take down the tent too."

Sheridan twisted in the air, Stars added weight knocking him off balance. "Let GO DAMNIT!" He screeched, trying to slash at stars hands.

"NO!" Stars arms were burning, he could barely hold on, he couldn't fly. That last slam into the rock face had dislocated his right wing, right now it was as useless as a rock, dead weight. A gust of wind sent Sheridan into the wall of rock, he folded his wings instinctively, trying to minimize damage to them.

Star shot out his left wing uselessly, barely slowing their fall, sending them spiraling through the air. "OPEN YOUR WINGS YOU IDIOT!" Star let go for a second, then grabbed onto Sheridan's shoulders, his right wing slid uselessly through the air, being battered by the wind.

"SHUT UP!" Sheridan forced his wings open into the wind, which sent them both back into the wall, his head slammed against a rock, knocking him out.

They crashed to the ground.

Rose jumped up from pulling down the tent, Bolt grabbed her arm. "LET ME GO DAMNIT!" She snarled at him, reaching up to rip his arm off hers.

"NO! They're already down anyway. You would have just hurt yourself and him. It was a short fall, it wouldn't have killed him." He put his hands on he shoulders. "You need to relax, now. You will help me finish putting up the tent, Cella will go and check on them."

"BUT! Star…" She knew he was right, she needed to calm down. She pulled away from him and turned back to the tent, tears forming in her eyes. She wanted to tear at the fabric.

"Cella, we need you to go and check on those two." Bolt called to her as she began walking to the other side of the tent.

"Who the hell is the other guy?"

"Doesn't matter, they're both hurt, and the other guy is unconscious. Go make sure that Stars condition isn't critical, and figure out what you can about the other guy." He turned around and walked to the tent, helping Rose pull the rest of the poles out.

Cella ran over to the two laying on the ground, Star was laying on his back, breathing hard. His right wing was crumpled half under his body, his other was folded tight, pinned next to his body. "Okay, I know that you aren't okay, so what's broken?" Cella asked, crouching next to him.

"Dislocated wing, I may have broken a couple bones in it, I think some of my ribs are dislocated or broken, maybe both. Where's Rose?" He kept his eyes shut, his voice cracked slightly when he mentioned Rose.

"Bolt held her back, is there anything else wrong?" She could tell he was in shock, no one was that calm after breaking that many bones.

"Sprained or broken ankle, broke my hand I'm pretty sure. I lost some blood, I think, maybe not too much. I dunno." He opened his eyes and looked at her for a second, then shut them again. "Rose needs to find the Pokécenter in Eterna, have her take the map. Sheridan hit his head pretty hard, he shouldn't be much trouble. Asshole, shut his wings, coulda killed us both, probably wouldn't have cared as long as he took me out with him." Cella looked over to Sheridan, who's name she'd just learned.

"Who is he?"

"I dunno what to call him, enemy, father, whatever. He was going to kill Rose. I shoulda left you guys after the plane, I was pushing my luck trying to stay with her."

Cella stood up, then smiled at him, noticing that he singled out Rose. "Just don't fall asleep, I'll be back in a second." She walked over to Sheridan, who looked as good as dead. His leg looked pretty much snapped in half, and he had a nasty cut on the side of his head.

She crouched down and got an inch away from his ear. "I doubt you can hear me, and it's a shame, because what I want to tell you is important." She paused for a moment, as if waiting for a response. "See, if you ever make any kind of threat to my friends again, I will personally hunt you down, and make sure you don't live to keep your promise." She growled at the unmoving figure, then stood and turned around.

"That was dark." Bolt was standing behind her.

Cella jumped, then snarled at him. "Shut up. I don't know what the hell YOU went through, but he loves her, and he hasn't had anyone, ever. Even you in that damned hellhole had to have had someone that cared about you, and he never really has." She hissed.

"He lived with a bunch of other morphs in a desert, he had a couple people for a while." Bolt said matter of factly, the fur along his arms rose slightly.

Cella sighed. "I'm not one to get into peoples personal lives, but I'm a psychic type, and I can't control that. Before he really got to know anyone, they were attacked. He never trusted anyone, not until now. So YOU can say what you like, I'm dark, whatever, but until you've known what it's like to loose everything because of one random chance happening, just shut the hell up." She stomped over to Star.

"And what the hell makes you think I didn't?" He growled behind her, electricity burning up and down his arms. "You don't know anything about me, and have no right to make assumptions. Maybe my loss wasn't chance, maybe it was planned out, down to the last damned detail, maybe I have to watch it over and over again, maybe I don't want it to stop, maybe I hate every minute of it. Maybe I love every last second I remember of it, but you sure as hell, will not ever know what happened, and I, sure as hell, am not letting you in." He bared his teeth, glaring at her with more anger than he'd ever shone to any of them. His arms trembled, and he walked back to Rose, past her, and pounded his fists into the rock wall.

"Emotional night for everyone. You need to tell Rose to fly, the winds died down." Star said this, glancing up at Cella.

"Yeah, Pokécenter, right." Cella felt like a jerk, Bolt hadn't deserved any of what she'd said.

She walked over to Rose, sighing.

"Is Star okay? What's wrong with him?" She was trying to be calm.

"Um, under the basic definition of okay, not really. He's alive though, but I don't think he can move…" She realized that she wasn't helping, at all. "Right. We need you to go to the Pokécenter in Eterna, you can have the map."

Rose stiffened. "I can't, leave. What if something really happens, what if what's-his-face wakes up?"

Cella shook her head. "You're the only one who can go, you're faster flying than any of us running, and even if Sheridan wakes up, he's got a badly broken leg. He's not going anywhere or doing anything."

"But what will the Pokécenter do anyway? What if I can't find it?" Now she was just stalling.

"Look, I'll mark this spot on the map, the Pokécenter should be near the center of the city, you can't miss it, it's huge and has a bright red roof. You talk to the Nurse behind the counter, and you might have to break in." Cella went over to the backpacks and pulled out the map, for the moment ignoring Roses frustrated look.

"So you expect me to fly there, and then just randomly break in the door or something?" She growled slightly.

"Yes, and if the nurse starts freaking out, tell her that your friend is hurt and you have to get him help immediately." She folded up the map after marking on it with a pen she'd gotten out of the bag.

"And how will that help?" At that point Cella realized that Rose hadn't ever been to a city that had a Pokécenter in the first place, and stared at her for a few seconds in shock.

"Um… Okay, Nurse Joy, ALL of them, can't resist helping Pokemon, or people really. You say someone is hurt and in need of immediate attention, they'll help first and ask questions later, usually coupled with a scolding about being more careful." She shoved the map into Roses hand.

"And I don't suggest trying to break the door, go through a window. Those doors are like, tornado proof."

"Right, so if the door doesn't open, I break in a window. Fun. And what about other people?" She didn't want to go alone.

"Look damnit, it's like, two freaking o clock in the damn morning. If anyone is awake, they aren't going to be concerned with a flying half human Charizard and if they are they're going to think they're stoned out of their mind, so get the hell out of here and get Star some god damn help already!" She practically screamed.

Rose started slightly, then something clicked in her head, and she jumped into the air, spreading her wings and speeding off south west. "Star. Oh god, I spent all that time, I have to get help for Star…"

Cella sighed as rose took off. Bolt walked over to her. "She okay?"

"I don't know. I think so, she's scared about going there alone, I think. It's probably mostly shock." She watched her disappear.

"Yeah."

"Hey, I'm sorry I yelled at you like that, it wasn't my place, and I was frustrated. I really feel like an ass actually." She went and sat next to Star, wrapping her arms around her knees.

Bolt sat next to her. "You know, thanks, for saying sorry. I shouldn't have been watching you like that. I just miss…" He sighed, frustrated. Balling up his hands, being careful to keep his claws from cutting through his skin.

"It's okay. Or not, I wouldn't know, but either way, no one is pressing you for information right now. You don't have to tell any of us anything, it's your life, not ours." She glanced at Star, who still had his eyes shut.

"Star, you awake?" She asked.

"It hurts. I want it to stop." He pressed his eyes shut tighter, and gritted his teeth. "I want to go to sleep, so the pain goes away. Sleep always makes it go away." He whimpered slightly, trying not to move.

"Let me take a look, does he have any head wounds?" Bolt went over to Star, carefully examining him.

"I didn't hit my head, Sheridan did, hurt himself trying to kill us." Star tried to take a deep breath and winced.

"You can sleep, we'll wake you up when Rose gets back." Bolt said.

"I love her. She's my best friend, it's like I've known her my whole life." He smiled, which Bolt thought was slightly creepy under the circumstances.

"Yeah, it's like we've all been together forever. Bolt, would you go see if there's pain killers in the first aid kit?" She asked.

"Yeah, I saw some earlier, I'll get four, and some water." He just grabbed the pack, and dragged it over. "We can't give him more, I don't remember why, but it would be bad. As it is, the nurse won't be able to give him any painkillers if we give him these. Your call." He unscrewed the top of a bottle of water.

"Star?" She asked, he didn't move, his breathing seemed regular. "I think he's asleep. I wonder what happened to them." She shut her eyes, then opened them again.

"I don't know, but it's not really warm out here, and we can't move them, but we need to keep them warm. If you could get some wood for a fire, I'll get them covered with the sleeping bags."

Cella grimaced. "Do we really have to help HIM?" She pointed at Sheridan.

"Yeah, well, I might not be human, not completely anyway, and I know I'm cold, and I've killed people. But, HE, is hurt, and I don't care who it is, you don't just leave someone to suffer. It's not right."

"Yeah. I guess." Cella walked off to find some firewood.

Bolt sighed, and shook his head slightly. "I hope Rose is okay. If she gets hurt Star'll freak. The last thing we want is him running off because he wants US to be safe."

Rose spotted the glowing lights of the city, and almost turned around. "No one will be out. I just need to find the Pokécenter, for Star." She took a deep breath and flew on.

Looking down as she flew over, she saw the lights lining the streets. "That's creepy. Why keep the street lit when no one is out?" She mutteret to herself. She stretched her wings out again, then shoved them down, giving her another burst of speed. She spotted the building with the red roof, all of it's lights out. She landed in front of the glass doors, touching them with her fingertips.

"Okay, the door won't open, maybe there's an open window." She flew up the three story building, beginning to think that she might have to break one if she couldn't find an open one as she got to the end of the second side. Then she spotted it, the window was only open a few inches, but that was enough for her to push it the rest of the way open. She stuck her head in, being careful to be quiet, she observed the room. There was a young woman asleep in the bed, a backpack and Pokéballs resting nearby. Rose took a deep breath, then flew away from the window for a second, thinking.

"Okay." She took another deep breath. "I have to be quiet." She looked at the window again, then quickly flew towards it, deciding to go feet first, she slid her legs into the opening, and carefully pulled her wings shut tight against her back. Rose gripped the bottom of the windowsill, carefully edging further in. She kept her eyes on the sleeping girl, fear creeping through her. Rose wasn't sure what to make of her, was she a friend, or another from team rocket? What would she do to her if she woke up?

Rose soon found herself standing upright in the room, it looked pretty normal, although it could have toned down on the pink a little more. She tried to quietly make her way past, almost making it when suddenly a Pokemon sprang out in front of her.

Rose screamed. The human shot out of bed, yelling something, and the Pokemon shot a jet of water at her, then began slashing at her with it's scythes. Rose barely dodged the second attack, then forcefully tackled the Pokemon onto the floor, making an effort to get past it. "Mud shot at it's feet!" She heard the human shout, suddenly she found herself slipping, she fell and hit the floor. "Use Brine."

Rose gagged as a wave of salt water came out of nowhere, getting in her mouth and nose, then more water rained down sharply from above, pounding her body, she gasped in pain. Suddenly she heard a crash. Rose curled up, arms protecting her tail, shins brought up to protect her face. She kept her wings folded tightly. "What is the meaning of this!" She heard a shrill voice shout. "It's three in the morning and you think it's a good idea to wake…" It stopped, Rose heard a gasp, and curled into her ball tighter, she tried to control her breathing.

"Sorry nurse joy, this… I don't know, it looks like some sort of deformed Charizard, but my Kubotops saw it and attacked it, then it screamed and woke me up and I couldn't think of anything else to do. It was sneaking around my room." The young woman said defensively, slight fear in her voice.

"Whatever it is, it's more scared of us right now I think." Rose heard the new human come closer, her tread soggy because of the soaked floor. "She looks pretty beat up. She certainly needs some new clothes." Rose took a few deep breaths, finally gaining control of her breathing. The girl had said Nurse Joy, that's who she needed. Rose carefully sat up.

The woman had a kind face, and bright pink hair. The pajamas that she was wearing were also pink, with little white flowers on them. Rose almost laughed, except Joy looked so freaked out. "My name is Rose and Fang," she looked at the two humans, whose eyes seemed to be bugging out of their sockets. "Call me Rose."

The nurse nodded, then took a deep breath. "If you'd come with me then, I think we'll be able to figure out a few things, what you're doing here, for instance." She walked out of the room. Rose stared at the girl, then at the Nurse, and walked out the door too. The girl followed after. "What are you?" She asked, the fear that had previously been in her eyes replaced by curiosity. Rose edged away from her, and walked closer to the nurse. She was still a little disturbed by the attack that this girl had ordered on her.

The nurse glared at her slightly. "Now that's no way to answer a question. You should answer properly." Humans are weird.

"Sorry. I'm half Pokemon, half human. A morph, what we've been called by Team rocket and most other humans." She stayed up by the nurse, but said it loud enough that the girl could hear.

"Jenny, I think we'd better wait until we're downstairs before we ask more questions." Joy had somehow guessed that she was going to ask more.

"There's not time, I need you, that's why I came. Star is hurt, he's hurt really bad. We need someone to help, I had to come because flying is faster than running." They could talk later, but right now she wasn't going to wait for them to dig through all of the information she had.

Nurse Joy suddenly stopped, then turned around. "Where is he?" Rose pulled the map out of the pocket of her pants.

"We're around this area, Cella marked where she thought we were."

"How many of you are there?" Joy immediately pulled out a cell phone.

"Including me, right now there's five. Two are badly wounded, and we have supplies." She wasn't sure how much she should be telling this human, but she felt comfortable around her. She knew what she was doing.

Joy dialed the police station. Rose heard a stream of cussing out of the object that she held. "Jenny, I know it's three in the morning, we have an emergency, I need a helecopter that can hold three passengers, two human stretchers, and basic storing."

Jenny glared at her phone, then was slightly shocked as Joy made this request. "We don't have any that can hold more than two passenger and a pilot that hold more than one stretcher. One of those will have to do."

"Fine, just get it here immediately." Joy snapped the cell shut. "We're heading up to the roof, we'll have to make an extra trip for one of your friends."

Rose had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

*************************************************************************

Cella tried to clean out the wounds on Sheridan's unbroken leg, wiping it with a wet strip of Bolts shirt, they'd cut off most of his pants so that they could at least get him cleaned up a little. The unconscious morph twitched slightly, but didn't open his eyes. Suddenly Cella heard a strange thumping sound, like someone hitting someone else with a pillow, except faster and steady. She walked over to Bolt, who was keeping an eye on Star. "What is that?"

Bolt gave her a look of confusion. "What?"

"That noise, it sounds like something's being beat to death with pillows." She said, listening as it got louder.

"It's just a helicopter, it's weird tha…" He suddenly smiled, then laughed. "SHE GOT A HELICOPTER!" He began laughing again.

Cella and bolt watched as the navy blue machine landed in the center of the outcropping of rock, small enough to fit, but large enough to carry people, and it looked like it could carry a lot more than it was holding. The door opened after the blades had stopped and Joy jumped out, fallowed by a slightly pale looking Rose. Bolt and Cella stood in front of Star.

Rose ran over to Star. "Is he doing okay?"

Bolt nodded, as Nurse joy calmly walked over. She was completely freaked out. "You must be the others she was traveling with, what about the fifth?"

"He's not with us, but he's really hurt, his leg is snapped in half, and we think he might have cracked his skull. He's still unconscious, we couldn't wake him. Star, here, had a dislocated wing, and we think about half of his bones are broken. You have to help him fast, because his bones should only take a few days to heal, like a normal Flygon. We don't think Sheridan is that lucky, his leg probably won't ever make a full recovery." Bolt used a slightly urgent, but calm tone. Nurse Joy was surprised, he sounded almost like a doctor.

She sent out six Pokemon. Each of them had an egg shaped body, and were pink. They held eggs in pouches. Two of them were bigger, and had ruffled parts around there middle. "Go and get the two stretchers, we're going to need to take them to the ER." The Pokemon all ran off, chanting.

"This is much worse than I thought it would be. What exactly happened here, I need to know everything." She said sternly, putting her hands on her hips, then she knelt beside Star. Rose was afraid to touch him.

"Everything would take us a lot longer than what we have, let's just start with tonight. Rose has to tell most of it, she was there and we weren't." Cella wanted to know where they had been together and what they had been doing.

Rose sighed, then began, telling them everything while the Chancey and Blissey carefully loaded the two Flygon Morphs onto the stretchers. Nurse Joy was doing things and hooking things up to the two, but she didn't pay attention. The only thing she left out was the kiss. That had nothing to do with Stars current condition. Cella glared at her, knowing that she held something back.

Nurse Joy nodded at Roses explanation as the egg shaped Pokemon took Star and Sheridan to the helicopter. She followed, talking to them.

"So what did you cut out of that little explanation?" Cella growled slightly. She already knew, but it would be easier if she just said it.

Heat rose in Roses face, even in the dark they could both see her blush. "Not right now, we need to get back to the Pokécenter." She walked after Nurse Joy.

"You really have a thing for prying into other peoples business don't you?" Bolt asked, walking a few feet behind Rose. Cella pouted and walked next to him.

"You know, I already know that something significant happened between them, and I'm pretty sure what, but you have no idea how obnoxious it is to know that without knowing for sure." She suddenly realized how stupid that sounded. "Never mind."

"Just because he kissed her doesn't mean that the whole world has to know. It's taken them long enough."

Cella stopped in her tracks, glaring at him. "But you don't know for sure."

"Yes I do, her body language says it all, then there's the fact that she left that out. Who follows someone out onto a cliff and then just talks about the weather?" Bolt smirked at her.

"O come on, I'm just trying to have some fun here." She growled quietly, sticking her tongue out at him.

Nurse Joy jumped out of the helicopter. "I don't know what we're going to do here, there's only two passenger seats."

"If you have a latter I'll just hang onto it." Bolt said bluntly.

"No! what if you fall off?" Nurse Joy looked slightly horrified at the idea.

"Yes, because a scientific mutation who's been battling other Pokemon for three years and avoiding murder can't hold onto a swinging ladder for a few minutes." He said, thinking about the rope ladder in the gym that he trained in before… Climbing it wasn't his forte, but he could hold on for a while.

"There's no need to be rude." She said sternly.

Bolt rolled his eyes. "After tonight none of us are staying behind." He growled. It was final.

**********************************************************************

Tyler laughed at himself. Water. He must have died in the water, and was now somewhere else. He wondered if he'd gone to heaven or hell, or if he'd even gone at all. Maybe he was a ghost. Tyler laughed quietly out loud, it sounded hoarse. He took a deep breath, then sighed. He didn't feel good, he felt hungry and thirsty, his ankle hurt. "Huh." He wasn't dead then, unless he was in hell, then his ankle would probably hurt.

He took another deep breathe through his nose, smelling several things at once, he shot up, opened his eyes, and screamed "Pancakes!"

He heard something clatter on the floor, then he saw Clair glaring at him. "Damn."

"What? She asked, picking up the flipper, turning back to the small stove.

"You're here, so I'm obviously not in heaven, which means that I'm either in hell or still alive." She grabbed an apple off the counter and chucked it at him, it hit him in the stomach, and rolled to the floor.

"You want these stupid pancakes or not?" She growled, glaring at him.

Tyler looked down at his stomach, which growled loudly. "Yes?"

He looked around, and realized that he was in a house. A small one, but still a house. "Where are we?"

"Three Island." Claire said dryly.

"Which is…?" He prompted warily. If it was a recognized island that meant people, and people meant team Rocket.

"South of Kanto and Johto, East of Hoenn, West of Sinnoh. Pretty much, we're out in the middle of nowhere, we have no clue where anyone else is, and we've been half adopted by a random stranger. He's a pretty okay person though, he knows what to feed Jenna at least." She began putting the pancakes on a plate.

Tyler was nervous, but Claire seemed to know what she was doing. At least they seemed to be safe, for now. Suddenly he realized something. "Jenna is with us?"

"Yeah, Mr. Kloric took her to the beaches around Bond Bridge, he's gathering Krabby in nets. They're going to be dinner. I was having a hard time getting her to calm down, he's got a real talent with babies." She said, opening the fridge and pulling out the butter.

He stared at her. "And he isn't freaked out by us or anything? And how is he going to keep an eye on her and chase them at the same time? What about other people? How long have I been unconscious?" He was worried about Jenna, if she got hurt, Vincent and Kelly would have his hide. They were probably worried enough, if they were even together.

"Relax. He…" She suddenly looked embarrassed.

"What!?" Tyler demanded.

"He put a leash on her…" She said, going back to the food. She put three on the plate and covered them in syrup and butter.

Tyler wasn't sure if he was amused or angry at this. He settled for hungry when his stomach growled loudly.

"Here," she handed the plate to him. "you've been out for about a day. The leash was necessary, and won't hurt her. It actually looked cute, and it will keep her safe."

Tyler hardly heard this as he practically inhaled the pancakes. He looked up at her. "Wuf rout uter fweeble?"

She made a disgusted face at him. "Ew. Tyler, swallow." She sighed.

"What about other people?"

"No one else lives here anymore apparently. There was a fire that took out half the population, and because some whirlpools appeared ships don't come here anymore. Only small boats can get around them, so he has contact with the other islands, but other than that it's pretty cut off. Even the Nurse Joy and shopkeeper left, because there wasn't anyone coming except for one or two trainers every now and again. Other people aren't going to be a problem." By the time she'd finished saying this he'd finished off the pancakes.

"Weird. He sounds okay, I wonder why he chose to live out here by himself." He didn't look thoughtful, he was staring at the rest of the pancakes.

"I don't know, but it's convenient for us. Especially with your broken ankle. He did his best to take care of that, and he called a doctor to come over and take a look anyway." She smirked, and took the plate from him, filling it up with more pancakes.

"I thought you said that no one else was around here!" He half shouted.

"We're in the Sevii Islands, there's seven known islands and a bunch of ruins. There's people around, just not many people come here. And don't go trying to say you're fine either, that thing is badly broken, and you're just going to have to deal with it. All of your little cuts and bruises from the shipwreck have mostly faded, but just because you heal twice as fast as a human doesn't mean that you can go about without medical attention."

"Yeah, thanks _mom_. If it's broken so badly then why doesn't it hurt that bad?"

"Mr. Kloric has been feeding you pain killers by the handful. I'm surprised that you didn't die of a drug overdose." She said bluntly.

"So… how bad is it _exactly_?" Asked Tyler. He knew that it had broken badly from the netting and the fall, but when that happened he hadn't exactly been in a situation to evaluate his own injuries.

"Well, we know that it's bad. We don't know as much as we'd like though. We think that you may have strained it too, but since it's impossible for it to be moved, we don't know. It's black and blue and all sorts of nasty colors though."

Tyler heard a door open, and saw a man walk into the room, he had Jenna in one arm, a basket of Krabby in the other. "Well, looks like you're wide awake. Good." He set the basket in the sink, the metal mesh unable to be cut by the pokemons claws.

Tyler looked over the man, he had on a simple outfit of jeans and a red shirt. He looked around fifty, with graying hair and happy looking brown eyes. Tyler was instantly suspicious of him. "So you're Mr. Kloric." He tried to keep the supecion out of his voice.

"Yeah, and you're Tyler, the annoying Pikachu kid. Clair hasn't stopped telling me how annoying you are since I found you." He smiled.

"She's not so bad at being a pest herself." Tyler said dryly, glancing at her. "She makes good pancakes though." He figured that if he ever wanted to eat again he had to be nice to her to some degree.

"Well, Jenna here has been quite the extraordinary and most unannoying of you all today. This whole Hybrid Morph thing is amazing."

Tyler rolled his eyes. "So, I take it you aren't even the least freaked out by us."

"Not a bit, I doubt that I'm any more afraid of you than the teenagers in that club Clair told me about."

Tyler decided that being nice was overrated, and glared at her until she turned red and went into another room. You don't tell anyone unless you know for a fact that they're on your side. "You haven't seen any moves yet." He said dryly, turning his attention back to the man. "That even freaks out the young ones. Even if they can get used to how we look, when we use moves it's scary, unnatural." He remembered camping with Cella. She seemed so far away, had they really shown off in front of the other children, using their Pokemon moves? It was like a different lifetime.

"Fine then, show me." he was still holding Jenna.

"Okay, but I need something to focus the electricity on if you don't want your whole house fried." He smirked. His moves had gotten pretty powerful. He remembered suddenly that he shouldn't get cocky though, even the simplest thing can go wrong. For some reason this thought made him nervous.

"Sure, how about the radio," he pointed to it, sitting on the table next to Tyler. "it hasn't worked in years."

"Alright, here goes nothing, literally. I'm going to touch it so I don't miss." He touched the metal antenna sticking out, and quickly began charging electricity. He smirked again, making sure that he could show off his power a little, he figured just sending sparks off around his fist would be enough.

He let the electricity flow through his body, making sure to release it in his fist, and suddenly it stopped. He felt it slightly at first, then something that he hadn't felt since he'd evolved. The pain screamed up his body, then back down again, focusing on one point. He yelled, and went to grab at his ankle, Mr. Kloric shoved him back. Tyler pushed against him, bit his arm and tried to shock him, which sent more pain into his body. He finally stopped when he saw the gun. Tyler lay there, panting, tears sprung up in his eyes.

"God kid, you're a Pikachu, right?" Tyler kept his focus on the weapon strapped to the mans waist. He had a gun. Only bad guys had guns, team rocket had guns. This guy couldn't be from team rocket, he'd be dead. Unless… He let the thought disappear as he passed out again. The return to the dark, to no thought, was irresistible.

************************************************************************

Bolt sighed as Nurse Joy shoved Cella out of the room, aiming for him next. He didn't want to leave, he knew that he could handle anything she did, and that he probably knew more about Stars biology than she did. He also knew that they weren't getting Rose out of there, and if something happened, they'd need him to help.

"You have to leave, no one is allowed in while we're working on them." Nurse Joy said, hands on her hips. Bolt almost laughed at the sternness of her voice.

"I promise that I mean no disrespect, but you're going to have to fight Rose to get her out of here, and what you're working with is structurally more human than Pokemon." Nurse Joy thought he sounded very disrespectful.

"All the nurses in Pokemon health care have to also have a degree in human health care and biology. In several towns there aren't hospitals, so we have to take care of people until we can fly them out to a city that has one. We are fortunate to have one, but I don't think it would be wise to take them there." She glared at him, about a foot taller than she was, he glared right back down at her. Neither was backing down.

"I can help you." He said, folding his arms across his chest.

She looked surprised for barely a second. "How could you help me then." She expected the typical answer that kids give when their Pokemon are hurt. That they know it better than anyone, they can help with tools.

"I know a lot about Morph biology, Star isn't just Flygon. Rose isn't just Charizard, Me, Cella, we aren't just Luxray or Espeon. Star has Aerodactyl and Gligar in him I'm positive, but it's not enough to affect his moves, it is enough to affect his biology. His bones are partially hollow, but refined because of the rock type. Any drugs you give him will burn off quickly, because his metabolism is very high, and his bones heal faster than a Gligars, you'll have to rebrake the ones in his wings for sure." Joy was slightly shocked, but then nodded.

"Fine then, under only one condition will I allow you to stay." Bolt knew he wouldn't like it, and Joy knew it wasn't information he was likely to give up easily.

"You want to know how I know so much."

Joy nodded, her pink hair bouncing slightly. Bolt smiled, then shook his head. "I can't. Not now. If you need help with him, or Rose, I'll be waiting with Cella." He turned and walked out the door. Nurse Joy turned in the other direction, to wash up before going into the Emergency Room. She was going to have to surgically realign some of the bones. She hated having to rebrake things, it was always hard on the patient.

Bolt walked into the waiting room, and walked up to the counter. There was another nurse standing there, she was younger though, an intern. "Depending on how long she's in there, she's going to need a lot of morphine. Stars metabolism and current body heat will burn through it faster than a normal humans. Up it to the amount you'd give a fire type for four hours, or just give him forty milligrams. He'll have a temperature that would kill a human, that's because his body is working extra hard to heal it quickly. It's just like with several types of Pokemon, except his body heat has increased by fifteen percent, instead of staying normal. His original body temperature is Ninety-nine point O." He walked away as the young nurse behind the counter grabbed a bottle of morphine and ran into the back. She was slightly freaked out, and hoped that her senior wouldn't chastise her for listening to the Morph.

"How did you know all of that!?" Cella stared at him, question and slight accusation in her eyes.

"All of the dragon type morphs excpet Altaria have a core temperature of ninety-nine." He knew that she wouldn't accept just that. She wanted to know how, why, he knew all of that. It wasn't something he could give up easily.

"How, though, how could you have possibly known that, at all, ever? No normal morph, no morph at all, would ever know something like that." She kept staring at him.

He looked at her, running his fingers through his black hair, he did it twice before he realized how much he looked… He stopped suddenly. He didn't want to be anything like him… He realized that he'd failed that, that when he'd uttered the first thing about biology to them, he'd failed it.

And he knew that he couldn't keep it from his friends anymore. He jumped slightly as he thought the word.

It was wrong, Rose and Cella, he knew about their past, how they got captured, he knew about Star, and that Giovanni was disturbingly interested in him. He knew about Stars father. No one knew anything about him, except that he didn't want to talk about his past.

"Fine."

Cella took in a sharp breath, then released it suddenly, as she realized what he'd said. "What?" She wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

"I'll tell you, and I'll tell Rose and Star. I'll tell all of Eterna and the lint under the couch if you want me to. Not now though. I can't tell it more than once, so everyone has to be here." the muscles in his back tensed, he let his tail twitch back and fourth. He would tell them, and what they did about it was their own business.

They sat there for about an hour, Cella went into the main lobby, and flipped the TV to the News channel after a creepily helpful Happiny showed her how to work the remote. Bolt stayed put, he'd gotten a few pieces of paper and a pen from under the ER admittance desk. There was a table in the corner with a phone and a dish of peppermints on it. He sat there, writing.

It was long, and he needed to write it all down. He needed to make sure it was real, he needed to let his father know. He finished, and looked at the computer in front of him.

He turned it on, the light buzz as the screen flashed on making him flinch slightly. "Hello! How-"

Bolt cut the obnoxious electronic voice off. "Email, thunderbolt405 at ."

He was surprised when it actually came up, his email address. It had been forever, he hadn't even bothered to check it at that house. He looked in disgust at the amount of spam that had collected, and a couple of role-plays he'd been involved in had told him that his account had been terminated. He laughed quietly. He inserted the three pages into a slot at the bottom of the computer. "Upload pages, create file. Letter."

The machine whirred so quietly he was sure that he was the only one who could hear it. Suddenly it beeped, and the file appeared in front of him. "Open file." The file opened, and the pieces of paper were ejected from the computer. He picked them up, then looked at the open file. Inside there was a copy of his letter, exactly as it showed on the paper, and one that had been 'typed'. The 'typed' one was neater, and easier to read, but Bolt ignored the computers request to delete his handwritten copies.

He clicked on an address in his contacts box, his fathers. It had always been a joke of theirs, that he had to send him an email, just so that he would come eat dinner sometimes. "Upload file, Letter, into mail, place in current draft."

The computer did what he asked, the file soon appeared as a small button with the word 'LETTER' on it. Bolt then quickly typed out a short message. "I wrote everything in the letter. Everything. Everything that no one knows. And as much as I hate to admit it at times, because I don't know who you are anymore, I am your son." He looked at it. It wasn't' great, it wasn't an apology, or an acceptance of one, it was just acceptance. He sent it.

"So you have a father." Bolt snarled and shoved himself backward, out of the chair, and he took a swipe at the startled young woman standing behind him, he almost hit her too. He had barely realized that it was the other joy, the young one, his claws were still out, his breathing shallow and his body posed to strike.

"I'm sorry. You're needed in surgery, I was supposed to find you and help you scrub up." She was strangely calm.

Bolt relaxed, then turned back to the computer. "Power off, thank you." he turned to Joy.

"You shouldn't have seen that. I'll scrub up, what does she need help with?" Joy began dragging him to a back room.

"She can't fix everything alone, and I don't have enough experience for something for this, I can't take the blood yet. Rose was given a tranquilizer and we put her in the room next to his. I'm supposed to be helping her right now. The other one is being taken care of by our Pokemon. She hates to admit it, but Tory can't get some of the bones set alone."

Bolt smiled. "So you all do have real names!" he laughed slightly.

When Bolt got in there was already a Blissey helping, and joy had blood on her plastic gloves. "If you do one thing wrong, I will kick you out in a heart beat."

Bolt nodded. "I haven't messed up before." He worked quietly, and helped set bones. Joy was amazed at how fast Star healed, the skin knitted together so quickly she could watch it. The bones weren't so fast, although several of them had already knitted together enough that they had to be broken again anyway. She was also amazed at how well Bolt worked. He didn't say a word, and didn't flinch when they had to break most of the bones in stars wing after relocating it. She had also noticed his comment. He hadn't messed up before, which meant that he'd done this before, or something like it. It made her nervous. From what she'd heard from Rose and Cella, they'd been kidnapped by, and escaped from, Team Rocket, and were looking for somewhere to go. She knew that they wouldn't tell her where they were going, for good reason, but they hadn't included Bolt in the kidnapped equation. She wondered exactly how much they knew about him.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

**One week of freedom**

Rose took a deep breath, and winced. Her back hurt. She heard footsteps, and a light humming. Her head was fuzzy, where was she? She opened her eyes and shut them again as fast as they'd opened. There was a bright light above her. She blinked a few more times, then turned her head. "Geeze, would someone turn that out?" She growled.

"Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't notice you were awake!" A girl dressed in pink and white scrubs walked over to her, flipping a light switch as she went by. The light over her face immediately went out.

Roses head cleared as she looked around the room, it was bare white, square, and smelled funny. Sharp almost, too clean. She realized what had happened a second later, and almost jumped out of the bed, except the hand of the nurse firmly pressed her back into the pillows. "He's fine. They just put him into recovery and he'll be waking up in a while. Right now you need to relax."

Rose sighed, and took another deep breath, and winced again, the pain had doubled. She looked at the nurse. "One of your ribs was cracked, and several of them are badly bruised. Your whole body is black and blue. Don't breathe too deeply for a while, and I wouldn't suggest moving your wings. If you want you can get up though, there's nothing wrong with your legs except for a couple bruises."

"Thanks." Said Rose, her throat felt like cotton. "Can I get some water?" Joy nodded, and walked out of the room, a Happiny walked in, all smiles as she stared up at Rose. Rose smiled back, and slowly stood up, stretching. She carefully moved her arms, then stretched her shoulders slightly. "Ow."

"Hi! You aren't a Pokemon, I know, but you aren't human! You're different, like your friends! I bet……" Rose was in no mood to entertain the little Pokemon.

"Yeah." She walked across the room, she felt stiff, although she couldn't have been asleep for more than a few hours. A few seconds later she realize that something was wrong, and it only took a few more to figure it out. All of her clothes were gone, and instead she was wearing a papery sort of shift that went down to her knees. There was a hole in the back for her tail, she assumed. She looked down at her feet, strange little booties covered them too. She had an urge to rip them off.

"OH! Here comes back Nurse Joy!!" The little pink annoyance squeaked. She hadn't shut up once for the few minutes that she'd been there.

The young woman walked in with a plastic cup that had a lid and straw. For some reason this made Rose feel like a ten-year-old. The intern handed it to her and she drank it anyway. "Thanks. Can I at least have my pants back, though? This isn't exactly comfortable."

She shook her head. "They're really torn up, and I don't think they would sit well on your bruises. I can get you a pair of sweatpants though, and a light t-shirt. Your friends are out in the lobby, if you want to be with them. We also got you and your friends four rooms."

"That sounds fine. Could you come and get me though, once he wakes up?" She asked, tiredly as she was led out of the room. Rose looked at the girl, she looked about eighteen, maybe younger, her hair was straight down her back, with none of the typical Joy styling.

"Of course. Remember to be careful though, his bones will take a while to heal, even with the rate he's healing at. That friend of your, Bolt, he's amazing. Tory talks about him like he fell out of the sky and saved the world." Rose stared at her, confused. What could have Bolt possibly done to get that kind of attention from the grumpy nurse?

"What did he do?"

"I'm not sure, but apparently he knows how to fix bones. And he knows a lot about anatomy and all of the things that most doctors or Joys do. It's like he went to medical school for eight years, which isn't even possible." Rose thought about this. Had Bolt really helped Star?

She was led into a room, it was smallish, but the Charizard morph could immediately tell it was the young woman's bedroom. She opened a drawer in the dresser, rifling through it. "You don't have to-"

"I hardly wear any of this stuff anymore, I've got some yellow sweatpants and a green shirt that I think will fit you. We have to wear pink for our uniforms, and even off duty we have to wear pink so that people can tell if we're a nurse in an emergency. No more yellow sweatpants for me." She laughed, and handed rose the pair, then she opened the drawer underneath the one she'd pulled the pants out of, and handed her a green slightly faded shirt to her off the top.

Rose looked at the shirt, and laughed. "Wings of a Charizard?"

Joy blushed, and looked down extremely embarrassed. She mumbled something rose couldn't hear.

"What? It's okay, it's fitting, at least." Rose was highly amused with the shirt.

"It was a band… I was in, during school. I'm decent on the keyboard. I dyed my hair green and orange, and we always had a burning trashcan. We had the shirts made, but we never really got anywhere. It was just a phase." She seemed disappointed that it had been 'just a phase.'

Rose had gotten lost in half of what she'd said. What the heak was a band? "It's fitting. Don't worry about it, besides, it'll match my wings at least."

"Thanks. There's a bathroom over there. You can change in there, if you need help with your wings, just ask." She pointed to a door. Rose followed her directions.

The bathroom was small, but had all of the necessities. There was a full length mirror on the door, a sink with a couple cabinets underneath, a toilet and a shower. Above the sink there was another small mirror. Rose took a deep breath and took off the shift, turning her back towards the full length mirror, she turned her head, then spread out her wings carefully. She sucked in a quick gasp of air. Up her back there were several dark spots of purple, they spread up her wings, and stopped around the middle of them. "I'm not flying for a while."

She picked up the shirt, and was surprised to find holes already in the back. She looked at in confusion for a while, then just put it on. She carefully guided her wings through the holes, making sure that they didn't get beat up anymore than they already were. It hadn't hurt that bad last night. A lot had happened since then, she supposed, and bruises always hurt the worst after you know they're there.

The sweatpants were a little big, and she had to be really careful not to set them on fire as she put them on after slicing a hole in the back for her tail. She pulled her hair out form under the shirt, and sighed.

A few minutes later she came out of the bathroom, and found the intern waiting for her. "Is there anything I can call you besides Joy, it seems creepy to call all of you that…"

The intern laughed. "You can call me Rheia, but not in front of Tory, the other Joy. She's a bit to strict about it I think, I mean, it's easier for all of us to have the same name, but it's annoying."

Rose nodded. "So, Rheia, I think I'd like to be with Cella and Bolt right now. Where are they?" Rose felt almost rude saying it, because it didn't seem right to just take someone's clothes, then run off to someone else.

Rheia laughed. "Sure, they're in the lobby. And I promise that as soon as we can, you'll get to see Star."

This made Rose blush as they walked out of the room and down a hall. She hadn't said anything to Bolt or Cella, but she guessed that it was easy enough to tell, she just hadn't known it.

As soon as she got out into the lobby, she saw them both sitting on the pink circular couch, that took up the left half of the room. They both had controllers and were practically shouting at each other. It looked so weird after spending so much time outside that she wasn't sure what to do until Cella saw her. "ROSE!"

She jumped up, throwing her controller and getting a perfect hit on Bolts head, and ran over.

Rose had to stop her. "Don't hug me. I'm kinda beat up."

"Oh." Cella looked her up and down, suddenly glaring at her. "These pants need some kind of decoration. Who ever heard of pants besides jeans that were just one color? Maybe a Butterfree…"

Rose could feel the embarrassment of the nurse like it was sitting on top of her. "Cella, they're fine. Besides, I like yellow." She actually wasn't really sure how she felt about the color, but at that moment she decided that yellow was okay anyways.

Bolt laughed at her shirt. "Wings of a Charizard? Sounds like that random band that tried to break into a rocket facility, never figured out what happened to them."

"Mike got shot in the shoulder and we had to take him to the emergency room. After that it fell apart." Rheia said dryly.

Bolt grabbed his face in his hand and looked like he wanted to beat a wall in with his head. "Is there anyone on the planet who hasn't been hurt by team rocket?"

"We were asking for it. Seriously, we ran inside the building and started playing 'It's the end of the world as we know it.' No one even believed that it had happened." She almost laughed, except for the look on Bolts face. "Sorry."

It wasn't he who spoke though. "So you obviously didn't live your life in a prison cell." Rose wasn't sure completely how to react to that. Then there was the fact that bolt was wearing white scrubs with tiny pink flowerd around the edges. "Nice scrubs."

"The scrubs and my life prior to them is a very long story, and I'm not going to tell it until Star is able to hear it too. Until then, you can either play video games and watch the news, or sit and be suspicious of me for the next few hours." Bolt seemed extremely light hearted about it for some reason.

"Wow. It's like I fall asleep for a few hours and everyone decides it's opposite day." She walked over to the couch and sat down.

Bolt laughed, which made her jump, then began teaching her how to play some weird game involving a plastic guitar. A few minutes later she realized what it was, Bolt was now in his element. Electronics and hospitals. For some reason this caused her to keep nervously looking back at him, which made her miss half of the notes in the song.

*********************************************************************************

Thomas nearly jumped out of his skin as his laptop made a loud "BEEP!" He had been asleep, and was sure that by the time the alarm had woken him up it would be lighter out. The sky was still filled with stars, which were amazing to see out of the window of the tree house. In the city you couldn't see anything like this. His computer screamed at him again, then the noise began to get more frequent. Thomas suddenly realized that it wasn't the alarm… Not the one he'd set to wake him up. He practically crushed the machine running to it. He hadn't dared to hope for two years…

He opened his mail, and stared at the inbox. There was one message. He was hesitant to click on it, as if it would disappear when he tried to look at it, as if it were just a ghost, an illusion. He took a deep breath and opened the message. He read through the few lines that had been typed, then immediately downloaded the file. He began to read as tears started to run down his face.

An hour later Thomas had written a reply, and set his computer to hibernate. It was only supposed to come back on if he got another message.

************************************************************************

Bolt suddenly sat up. "Hey, I'm going to check my mail, I'll be back." He walked into the waiting room, where he'd been on the computer.

Rose stared at him, lost. "Mail? What is he talking about."

Cella shook her head and told her not to worry about it, and taught her for the third time how to make her character in a new game fly.

Bolt logged on, shut up the annoying voice, and called his dad through the computer. If Thomas had anything electronic, he'd find a way to speak through it. Bolt wondered if he could pick up a cell phone in the city, they probably didn't have enough money though. He suddenly realized how stupid that thought was. Team Rocket could track phones, and he's have to give a name and address… "Geeze, I spend one day in a city and I already want a cell phone. I must be stupider than I thought."

"Or just really bored. Where are you… and why are you wearing scrubs?" Bolt stared at Thomas. Thomas stared at Bolt.

"I'm sorry."

They both said it at the same time.

Thomas was the first to speak again. "For what? It's not like you ruined your own life. It's not like you and Tilla did anything wrong. So, what's with the scrubs?"

Bolt winced at her name. It should feel more awkward, talking after three years, after not even knowing weather the other was alive. "Remember how I made you let me study biology when I was eight?"

Thomas nodded. "yeah…"

"And how the other rockets went behind your back and let me work on those people when I was twelve and thirteen…?"

"So you're working in a hospital? How did that happen?"

Bolt laughed. "Right now I'm in a Pokécenter, I'm traveling with three other morphs, one of which just had several bones in his body broken. The Joy here needed help fixing them."

Thomas sighed, shaking his head. Three years was a lot. He wasn't going to even ask how it had happened. He though it would be harder than this. Suddenly he remembered Tilla. He had to tell him, and he knew it would tear him up. He decided to wait. "Why aren't you angrier with me?"

Bolt thought for a while. "It wasn't your fault. This is probably going to sound weird. I've had the same dream for three years now, every time I sleep. Weird thing is that I don't need any anymore, but either way, I saw you. There was no way you could have possibly done that to us. Who I'm mad at is Giovanni." He realized it as soon as he said it. Giovanni had been the one to tear them apart.

"You know who Giovanni is?"

"Same dream every night for the past three years." He said dryly. "Every time I decide to sleep I see how much pain he put you through, and I see him. I've learned a lot about him from just that little image."

Thomas was suddenly in over observant mode. He pulled apart a few of the things Bolt had said and began analyzing them. "You said 'decide to sleep'…"

Bolt rolled his eyes. That look was so familiar it was almost scary. "Yeah, well, after spending two weeks awake at one point I figured out that I wasn't tired. At all. Not my brain, not my body. It took me another day to figure out how to fall asleep, and there we go. I sleep when I want. I haven't slept for about three days this week."

Thomas was utterly fascinated, but he shook it off. "Look Bolt, there's something I have to tell you, and I need you to believe me. Because in a few hours I might end up dead."

This startled him, but he didn't show it. What was Thomas going to tell him. And why would he end up dead? "Okay. I'll listen."

"Okay. Bolt, in about two hours, I'm going to break into a team rocket base with a bunch of teenagers. And rescue everyone there." Bolt knew this wasn't everything he wanted to tell him, but he found it so funny he had to laugh. He knew Thomas was being serious, but it just sounded too funny.

Thomas smiled, and waited until he was done laughing. That had been what he wanted to do. "Bolt. We're going to rescue everyone there. Including Tilla."

Bolt began choking on air. He stared in disbelief at Thomas face on the screen. He didn't know how to react, his mind completely shut down.

"Oh shit. Bolt? Are you okay? Okay, okay that was a stupid question. God I'm such a terrible father. I still act like a kid." Thomas watched Bolt.

Finally it completely clicked, and Bolt began to laugh at his own stupidity, it reached the point of hysteria, and suddenly he burst into sobs. Of course she wasn't dead. The rockets weren't that stupid, they wouldn't have let him know if she'd survived. He finally calmed down enough to talk. "No. Telling me that was important. I miss her."

"Yeah. Right now I'm in Fortree. I was going to go to my house in Dewford after this, and help from the outside. I'm not exactly good at running screaming into buildings and knocking people out." He said.

Bolt laughed a little again, his thoughts on Tilla. Every single heartbeat was like a tiny reminder to him now. Til-la, Til-la, Til-la. "Hey, you've never done it before, you never know… When you find her," he couldn't say if, if meant there was a chance she wouldn't be there. He couldn't let himself say it. "tell her I'm alive, somehow make sure that…" He didn't know. Let her know that He loves her? That wasn't exactly something you had your _dad_ tell the girl you love.

"I know. I'll see if you two can talk on the computer."

Thomas looked at the time. He had to go soon. He looked at Bolt. "It shouldn't be this easy. To talk again."

"Yeah. Dad. I miss you, I think." Bolt was still slightly confused. It was like he'd just been given a huge overload of information. _'he knows I love her…'_ he wondered how long he'd known.

"Look, I have to go in a little bit. I know that you can't have much money on you, so I'll send a credit card. Only use it for emergencies, wherever you are, Team Rocket is looking for you. I'm Positive. You're going to need stuff though, food, clothes. Use it for that." Thomas slid the card into a slot on his computer. He sent it to bolt, the energy it took to send used up about half of what he had left. It materialized in a slot in the computer that Bolt was using, and slid out.

"THANK YOU!" The computer screeched. It made Bolt jump.

Thomas looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Pokécenter computer. I'm pretty sure that Tory the Nurse Joy would kill me if I messed with it."

Thomas nodded. "I have to go now, and I promise I'll find a way for you to see her."

"Thank you." Neither wanted to turn off the screen. Finally Thomas shut his computer, and it powered down. Bolt finally pressed the power off button. And grabbed the small piece of plastic. It wasn't something that should have been given to him because he was hiding from murderers and needed food. It didn't feel right. He smiled and stuck it in his wallet anyway, which hadn't left his person since he got it.

***********************************************************************

Rose was led down the hallway, Cella following. Rheia stopped at a the door to the recovery room. "Just Rose, for now."

Rose went in and sat down in a plastic chair next to the bed. She stroked the top of his hand. Star Smiled. "How do you feel?" He asked.

"Like crap, but you got hurt way worse than I did. How do you feel?"

He laughed, but stopped, tears coming to his eyes. "Like crap. Four of my ribs are broken apparently."

Rose stared at him. Then she leaned over and kissed him. "Feel any better?" She murmured, noticing how hot her was. "you're running a temperature…"

"Marginally. I'm not sure why I'm so hot though." He smiled, then realized that Rose said she'd gotten hurt. He groaned, scrunching his eyes shut.

"What? Do you need me to get Joy…?" She asked.

"No. You said you got hurt…" He looked at her, searching to a cast or something. "How bad?"

"It's nothing compared to you." The last thing she wanted was him worrying about her injuries.

"Just tell me, or I promise that I'll think it's a lot worse than it actually is." He said it almost teasingly.

"Fine." She rolled her eyes, then turned around and spread out her wings carefully. No way was she showing him anymore than that.

Rose heard a sharp intake of breath, then he gently stroked her wing. "I shouldn't have gone out there."

"Yes, because letting him in camp would have made this any better." She growled. "If you say one more word about anything being your fault for the rest of your life…"

"What?" He asked, as she turned back around, sitting in the chair.

"I just realized that it wouldn't be much of a punishment. Never mind."

"Now I'm going to complain and blame myself until you tell me."

"No you're not."

"Why?

"Because if I ever hear you say anything bad about yourself again I'm going to cut you off and keep talking until you forget what you were saying in the first place." She growled, then laughed. It wasn't her original plan, but it would work.

"Fine. Although you can't deny that it was stupid of me-"

"What did I say? Now I have to babble on and on about no particular subject until I've got you brainwashed into thinking your perfect."

Star laughed. "That'll take a while."

Tory the Nurse Joy walked in, holding a glass of water and leading Cella and Bolt. Rheia came in a few soeonds later, followed by the happiny who couldn't shut up.

"Hey. Guess I'm a mess… Bolt, why are you wearing scrubs? With pink on them?" Bolt sighed. Why had that been the first thing everyone had said to him?

"Long story. You up to it?"

Star looked at him in confusion. "A long story about why you're wearing scrubs? Did a Pokemon decide that your shirt looked like a good snack?"

"Ha ha. No. I'm wearing scrubs because Tory," he pointed to the older Joy, "needed help, and Rheia couldn't take the blood and was treating Rose. Right now you're in the Recovery Room, and your bones should be fully healed in about four days. You should be able to walk in two. Sheridan wasn't so lucky, he's in a coma and his leg probably won't ever be the same again."

Stars mouth was slightly agape. "So, I take it that you meant the story behind the fact that you can say all of that like it's the most normal thing in the world for you to know."

Tory just shook her head. "Most people are a lot more out of it after waking up."

Star almost laughed. "Yeah, okay. Most people aren't half humans who could stab themselves in the arm and It'd be healed before there was muscle damage. It's not very surprising that it didn't take me very long to recover from being drugged."

Tory began to wonder if sarcasm and bluntness were just part of a morphs basic DNA makeup. As if it had been programmed into every single one of them.

"No, sarcasm and bluntness is what you get when you spend most of your time hiding from people who are trying to kill you." Cella stated in a disturbingly happy and pleasant tone of voice.

Everyone stared at her for a second. She realized that no one had said anything. "Sorry. Someone was thinking too loud."

"I don't know weather I should be frightened or fascinated." Rheia said.

"Usually it's both." Bolt said, a slight smirk on his face.

"Bolt's opted to tell us his story!!" Cella randomly exploded. She looked like she wanted to bounce around the room.

"Yay? Can he tell us over coffee or does it have to be now?" Cella looked a little disappointed.

"Cella, I think you like being in other peoples business just a little too much. Besides, the world won't end if we don't know everything about everyone in the next five minutes." Rose said.

Rheia waved her arm to get Cellas attention. "I know it's not my business, but how does that work? The whole Psychic thing, do you hear people all of the time, and can you control things with your mind or…" She let it trail off.

"Everyone's attention is all over the place today. I think I'm going to agree with Star here, who wants coffee?" the other three stared at him like he had suggested jumping into a pit of lava.

"We don't have the money for that!" Star said, glaring at him. What was he thinking?

"Then there's the fact that rockets are everywhere! And I don't think humans would be exactly thrilled with you walking around in scrubs while your ears and tail stick out for everyone to look at!" Cella practically shouted. Bolt waited patiently.

"Or we cold fill out an order online and have it brought to the Pokécenter, and one of the lovely nurses here or a Pokemon could pick it up?" He suggested.

"I'm not picking up the bill for coffee." Said Tory dryly.

"I'll take care of the cost." Bolt snapped, he was getting impatient.

"How are you going to take care of it? We can't pay for coffee! We don't have the money to waste." If Cella had been any louder it would have popped Bolts eardrums.

Bolt smiled. He hadn't been able to think of a better way to bring it up, and he figured coffee was cheap enough it wouldn't be too big of a problem. He knew that Thomas wouldn't have given him one that had his real name and address on it, it was probably the one he used to order useless knicknacks that team rocket hadn't known about. Like the time he ordered half of a brain… Bolt shook his head, making his ears flap comically. He pulled out his wallet, and then slid out the card. "I have a magic piece of plastic."

Tory grabbed it and glared at him. "There's no way you could have gotten this, who'd you take it from?"

Rheia glared at the older woman. She opened her mouth to speak, but Bolt cut her off. "I didn't steal it from anyone, my father just sent it to me."

"How did your father get a credit card?" Star asked calmly. Rose was digging her claws into the palms of her hands, she didn't like this. Whatever that card was, it was human, and human things aren't usually safe. Not any of the ones she'd seen. Everything humans made could hurt or kill people.

Cellas attention was entirely on the little piece of plastic. She started murmuring about shopping and clothes and something called a food court.

Bolt stayed perfectly still for a few seconds, listening to Cella mumble as if in a trance, listening to Roses breathing, which was controlled, but shallow. He looked at Star. If anyone in that room could still possibly trust him after this, it was him. "He's human."

**************************************************************************

That human stood outside of a rocket base, unviewed by the camera system he'd just rewired so that what it showed was a flashing green screen, and he'd somehow managed to give this a screaming recording of 'I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves.' Computers are amazing. To say the least, the people keeping guard were pissed. A bunch of people ran outside, and he pretty much looked like the rest of the startled scientists going into work. He slid into the building with them, and ran into an elevator, much to their constant surprise. One of them managed to slide in with him before the doors shut with a ding. Apparently his messing with the cameras had also affected the motion sensors in the elevator. Thomas placed his hand on Mysterious Pokéball.

"Long time no see Thomas." The woman said.

Thomas relaxed a little, but didn't move his hand. "Candice. Yeah, what have you been up to lately?" Candice had bright red hair, and a handful of freckles across her nose. Her face was round and she had an air of calm about her that didn't seem penetrable. Thomas hadn't seen her in forever.

"Thomas, you just rewired a camera and now none of the buttons on the elevator will work. I think you need to tell ME what _you've _been up to."

"How about I don't and you say I did?" Trusting people wasn't at the top of his list.

"You're just as immature as always, you stupid fool. I know what you're looking for. Tilla is on the third floor, which this elevator will stop on unless it doesn't stop. Then we're in some serious trouble. I can't believe that you gave her to those assholes. She ended up here really badly beat up, and she couldn't even use moves! I can't believe that you would-"

"Candice. If I had given them up, I wouldn't be here. I would have committed suicide a long time ago. I'm trying to make some things right, and bringing Bolt and Tilla together will at least help. I know how badly it hurt Bolt, and every day for the past three years I've felt like shit for it. I knew Tilla can't use moves, when she was born we did a scan on her, and there was a slight problem in her brain, she'll never be able to attack with moves." He released his Pokéball, and the elevator dinged. He knew he wouldn't run into trouble from Candice.

"Did you know that she can't evolve?" She asked as they quickly walked out of the quickly closing doors.

"No, her evolution shouldn't be a problem. Her evolution status was that of a mix between level and age, like the created morphs. It was a trait I hadn't expected to see in ones that had been born though. She should evolve around seventeen or eighteen. Right now she's seventeen…" He tapped his fingers against his leg as they walked. Everything had been too easy lately. It was weird. He didn't like it.

"She's around level forty-five, or fifty, and she's seventeen. None of the tests that have been done on her even show any sort of trace of evolution, although she's been maturing at the human rate properly. It's like the energy that's saved up for it has been sapped out of her."

"And once the energy has left the Pokemon a second time, or morph, in this case, they cannot collect it again to evolve again. No Pokemon to date has evolved more than twice, nor, do we think, ever will. The Pokemon who haven't evolved or only evolve once are cases where the part that collects the energy is shut down or hasn't been completely unlocked. Something happened where this energy left her without sending her through evolution. I didn't know that was possible. Maybe-" He'd been spouting this off like a textbook on tape.

"Ah hem. I know you'd like to babble on about this all day, but in about thirty seconds we'll have met Tilla, and in about thirty minutes all of your little friends are going to come screaming out of the woods. So less talking and more walking please." She glared at him.

Thomas picked up the pace, and became mistrustful of Candice again. If she'd known about the attack, then it was possible that others did too. He slid his hand back onto the Pokéball. Candice liked fire types, Misdreavus was the best defense he had. Just like she'd said, about thirty seconds later, they were standing in front of a set of double doors with an extremely plain looking label that said KITCHEN, in block letters. Thomas almost laughed. He hadn't expected that they would let her keep cooking. He almost asked, when Candice told him. "You haven't had the previous chefs cooking. Everyone is going to come after you just to get her back, although I don't know what her reaction to this will be. She won't believe anyone that he's still alive."

Thomas stopped her from opening the door, resting his hand on top of hers. "Why are you helping me? You've always been loyal to Team Rocket, and there's nothing stopping you from turning me in or just killing me."

"Thomas." She sighed, shaking her head. "I haven't been loyal to team rocket since Tilla got here. I've been waiting for you." She pushed open the door.

Tilla hummed lightly as she cut up the carrots, the snap of the knife against the glass cutting board was comforting. Snap. Snap. Snap. She picked up the pace. Snap snap snap snap snap. Faster. Snapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnap. Soon she was done with the orange vegetables, and she poured them into a pot of water, and turned on the burner to high. The door opened. "Vegetable soup tonight. Someone needs to go shopping tomorrow, we're out of eggs and milk again, and we need more garlic. I have a whole list of other things too. Tomorrow if no one goes we're going to be eating cardboard." She went to the sink, and began washing the cutting board and knife.

"Hi Tilla, you're not going to be staying here much longer." Candice said.

"Great. Every time I get used to a kitchen they move me again. At least you'll be following me. It's nice that at least one person can stick with me. It's bad enough that they won't let me use a knife for the first week. None of them have any idea how to mince garlic, I swear-" She turned around and dropped the cutting board, most of it cracked and broke into eight large pieces, while the rest of it shattered and pebbles of glass skittered out across the linoleum.

Tilla stared at him. Shock spreading through her body. She hadn't expected to ever see him again. The fire on her head and back immediately shot out, the tank top and tan khaki pants she was wearing barely missed by the flames. She gritted her teeth, holding back tears, the sight of him ripped open wounds she'd though had been better sealed, although they hadn't healed. The breath shot out of her as if she'd been punched in the stomach. Candice ran over and wrapped her arms around her, as she began to sob. Thomas just stood there, unsure of what to do. He felt useless.

"I don't know what to say." He mumbled.

Tilla heard him, and was finally able to wipe away her tears. She wanted to scream at him. Punch him. Kill him. She knew she could, after they'd finally figured out she couldn't use moves like Pokemon they'd started her on martial arts for some reason. She knew that if she wanted to she could hurt him. It was his fault. He'd let team rocket take them. He'd let them kill him. Instead she took a deep breath, and gently pushed Candice away. She walked up to him, every single drop of hate in her body making it's way out of them. She raised her hand, and made to smack him, he blocked it and she kneed him in the stomach.

Thomas doubled over onto his knees, holding his stomach, gasping for breath. "Okay. I. Deserved. That."

"Yes." She growled at him.

A few seconds later he'd regained his breath. "You could probably spend all day beating on me and not be happy with the damage."

She didn't know where he was going with this. "Probably two."

"By two I'd be dead. Let's leave it at one. Do you want to stay here and cook? Or do you want to get out of here?" He stayed on his knees.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that in a few minutes, a group of teenagers are going to attack this base and get all of the morphs, who want to go, out. I'm offering to get you out, and any others that we run into, out before the chaos starts."

"Where will we be going?"

"Does it matter as long as they can't control you anymore? And as long as you are able cook?" He'd considered mentioning Bolt, but decided against it. She was a completely different person! He was surprised he was able to recognize her, and he knew that talking about him was a bad idea right now.

"I don't know." Thomas looked up at her, there were still tears streaming down her face, making tiny rivers through the soft brown fur. She turned to Candice.

"I'm going with him. I've been friends with him longer than he's been alive. You'll be fine."

Tilla shuddered slightly, then nodded. "Fine. But while we're getting out of here he'd better explain where we're going."

Thomas stood up, and moved towards the door, Candice and Tilla following. He pushed it open and almost ran into a Morph, he was about four inches taller than Thomas, and had black hair. His eyes glinted a dark amber, and he snarled as Thomas bounced off of him. "Who the hell are you?"

Thomas looked him over. There was an amber gem in his head, and his tail was curled… He looked like a Persian morph, except that the layer of fur covering his body was pure black. Thomas gaped at him and then began going over the possibilities in his head, there could have been a mutation in the cells to cause the human strain to change his skin or it could be natural, it wasn't someone…

Candice thumped him on the head with the back of her hand. "His coloration is because of an increase of Melanin in his fur, it happens extremely rarely to Pokemon, but it's much more common in Morphs. Thirty percent of them are Melenistic, we were studying why in the lab here. The odd thing is that none of the genes you used had a trace of Melenism in them, so this is some sort of genetic mutation. And Pokémorphs becoming shiny is something that's almost genetic in them, unlike for normal Pokemon. It's like some chemical reaction that happens in the parents brain that unlocks the gene, but it's inconsistent. With twins it's inconsistent…" She would have kept going if the morph hadn't glared at her.

"I'm Daren. What's going on here?"

"I'm leaving." Tilla stated calmly.

"Then who's going to cook?" Daren growled.

"Hopefully the humans will learn how to cook themselves. In a bit, apparently, the base is going to be attacked, and Thomas," she pointed at him. "is going to get us out of here. Coming with?"

"Sure, I'm getting tired of this place anyway. Although being in the company of two more scientists is going to get annoying. How are we getting out of here?"

Thomas smiled. "We're hopefully going to just walk out. I think Candice will know where to go. I'm going to come back in and try to find more people."

"No you sure as hell won't." Candice glared at him. "Daren here can get the morphs who want to leave all lined up, and YOU are going to take us where we need to go."

Thomas opened his mouth to object, then sighed. "Fine, but we're going to have to run. My Skarmory won't be able to carry all of us."

"I'll go and find everyone who wants to leave and make sure that the Rockets are thoroughly confused." Then he looked at Thomas for a few seconds. "I take it that you're the one who has the camera room screaming that obnoxious song?"

Thomas nodded, and Daren smiled, his fangs showing in a flash of white, then he was gone down the hall. "Lets get out of here."


End file.
